'Man of the Hour: James B. Conant, Warrior Scientist'

Jennet Conant, Simon & Schuster, 587 pages, $30.

Jennet Conant is the acclaimed author of four previous books about World War II, including two bestselling volumes on Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project. She is also the granddaughter of James B. Conant, the subject of her new biography. She comes peculiarly well prepared and motivated to write the story of her grandfather — a brilliant chemist, president of Harvard University for two decades, administrator of the Manhattan Project, diplomat and Cold Warrior scientist. Jennet Conant's father was highly critical of her grandfather, even moving the family to Japan, so she was caught in the poisonous relationship between her father and grandfather: "The deep rifts in our family never entirely healed." "Man of the Hour" is an experienced biographer's attempt to understand both this family rift and her enigmatic, highly intellectual grandfather. It is a most serious work, and well written. Conant the biographer wrestles with such weighty controversies as her grandfather's role in the development of mustard gas during World War I, various battles over academic freedom at Harvard, the fight over whether or not to build a hydrogen bomb and how to use it, McCarthyism at Harvard and the rearming of West Germany. It is an astonishing list of highly complicated ethical and political minefields — and for the most part, Conant navigates these debates while acknowledging the competing schools of thought among orthodox and revisionist historians of the Cold War.

NEW YORK TIMES