American Prometheus, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Robert Oppenheimer by Executive Director Kai Bird and Marty Sherwin, first published in 2006, has become an international bestseller on the heels of being used as the basis for Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film Oppenheimer. Profiles of Bird have appeared in the New York Times Magazine (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/10/books/oppenheimer-american-prometheus-sherwin-bird.html) and he has published a number of articles related to the film and book, most notably in the New Yorker and the New York Times.

From Publisher’s Weekly: “Scribner v-p and executive editor Rick Horgan bought world rights to Kai Bird’s American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn and the World He Made for mid-six figures in a five-house auction. Bird is a coauthor of American Prometheus, the Pulitzer Prize–winning 2005 biography of Robert J. Oppenheimer. Scribner described American Scoundrel as a portrait of the titular “super-lawyer, fixer, and gossip-fixated social networker” who was a mentor to Donald Trump. The book will be ‘especially intriguing in what it lays bare about the lessons Trump learned watching Cohn intimidate others, but, implicitly, it will also ask important questions about a dark vein in the American character that Cohn was the embodiment of and that has only become more prominent in the years since his death.’ Bird was represented in the deal by Gail Ross at Ross Yoon Literary, and American Scoundrel is slated for 2025.”