In 1992, David C. Cassidy's groundbreaking biography of Werner
Heisenberg, Uncertainty, was published to resounding acclaim from
scholars and critics. Michael Frayn, in the playbill of the Broadway
production of Copenhagen, referred to it as one of his main sources
and "the standard work in English." Richard Rhodes (The Making of the
Atom Bomb) called it "the definitive biography of a great and tragic
physicist," and the Los Angeles Times praised it as an "important
book. Cassidy has sifted the record and brilliantly detailed
Heisenberg's actions."
No book that has appeared since has rivaled Uncertainty, now out of
print, for its depth and rich detail of the life, times, and science of
this brilliant and controversial figure of 20th-century physics.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, long-suppressed information has
emerged on Heisenberg's role in the Nazi atomic bomb project. In Beyond
Uncertainty, Cassidy interprets this and other previously unknown
material within the context of his vast research and tackles the vexing
questions of a scientist's personal responsibility and guilt when
serving an abhorrent military regime.