Man of the Hour, Jennet Conant
Man of the Hour, Jennet Conant
List: $39.99 | Sale: $28.00
Club: $19.99

Man of the Hour
James B. Conant, Warrior Scientist

Author: Jennet Conant

Narrator: Fred Sanders

Unabridged: 24 hr 12 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/19/2017


Synopsis

“Gripping…an outstanding portrait” (The Wall Street Journal) of one of the most influential men of the greatest generation, James B. Conant—a savvy architect of the nuclear age and the Cold War—told by his granddaughter, New York Times bestselling author Jennet Conant.

James Bryant Conant was a towering figure. He was at the center of the mammoth threats and challenges of the twentieth century. As a young eminent chemist, he supervised the production of poison gas in World War I. As a controversial president of Harvard University, he was a champion of meritocracy and open admissions. As an advisor to FDR, he led the interventionist cause for US entrance in World War II. During that war, Conant oversaw the development of the atomic bomb and argued that it be used against the industrial city of Hiroshima in Japan. Later, he urged the Atomic Energy Commission to reject the hydrogen bomb and devoted the rest of his life to campaigning for international control of atomic weapons. As Eisenhower’s high commissioner to Germany, he helped to plan German recovery and was an architect of the United States’ Cold War policy.

Now New York Times bestselling author Jennet Conant recreates the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century as her grandfather James experienced them. She describes the guilt, fears, and sometimes regret of those who invented and deployed the bombs and the personal toll it took. “A masterly account…a perceptive portrayal of a major player in world events throughout the mid-twentieth century” (Publishers Weekly), Man of the Hour is based on hundreds of documents and diaries, interviews with Manhattan Projects scientists, Harvard colleagues, and Conant’s friends and family, including her father, James B. Conant’s son. This is “a most serious work, well written and evocative of an era when the American foreign establishment exuded gravitas…[a] new, relentless, and personally invested account” (The New York Times Book Review).

About Jennet Conant

Jennet Conant is the author of Man of the Hour: James B. Conant, Warrior Scientist, and the New York Times bestsellers The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington and Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II. She has written for Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ, Newsweek, and The New York Times. She lives in New York City and Sag Harbor, New York.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Len on December 26, 2018

MAN OF THE HOUR: JAMES B. CONANT, WARRIOR SCIENTIST is a honest and loving biography of an extraordinary man by his granddaughter, Jennet Conant. (Do not dismiss this as a family memoir. Jennet Conant is an accomplished author and journalist.) I put this book on my TO READ list on GOODREADS in Decemb......more

Goodreads review by David on January 04, 2023

I just finished Jennet Conant's, Man of the Hour: James B. Conant, Warrior Scientist. I was aware of who James Conant was due to his link to the Manhattan Project but I was shocked he much I didn't know. A man who overcame his family's background to achieve a scholarship to Harvard. A chemist by tra......more

Goodreads review by Phil on January 21, 2018

James Conant was one of the most famous men of his time. He was an award winning chemist who made several scientific breakthroughs, one of the youngest presidents of Harvard serving so for two decades, director of the Manhattan Project, confidant of Presidents FDR, Truman & Eisenhower, high commissi......more

Goodreads review by Dennis on January 03, 2018

James B. Conant High School opened my sophomore year, all we were told was that Conant is a famous educator. The book is the story of his life, it’s 500 pages, sometimes I labored through sections but much of the book was fascinating. He was a “scholarship boy” at Harvard, a brilliant chemist, helpe......more

Goodreads review by Rindenver on March 09, 2018

I had never heard of James Conant before reading this book. How can there be someone who had so much influence, yet most people know nothing about him and what he did? Yes, he was a key player in the development of nuclear bombs, but he also had a profound influence on education, and the effects of......more