“Now I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds”: A Review of Hannah’s War by Jan Eliasberg
(New York, Boston, London: Back Bay Books; Little, Brown, 2020). ISBN: 978-0-316-53744-5. As one looks back on the many watershed moments in U.S. history—the result of decisions made by a small group of White men that cost at times millions of lives around the globe—the country’s role in World War II and its aftermath are perhaps the most hotly debated (with Vietnam an equally strong contender) because of the late-war actions of dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Operation Paperclip/the start of the Cold War. America and Russia bringing Nazi scientists—many of whom would not have faired well at Nuremberg—into the fold of the fledging military–industrial complex that Eisenhower and Kennedy tried so hard to forestall set a tone for immoral action on the global stage, the repercussions of which are still being felt. Science, and scientists, are at the heart of Hannah’s War , which is A-list historical fiction centering on a Jewish Austrian scientist named H...