William L. Laurence was arguably the most prominent science writer in America during the early Cold War. But the Pulitzer-winning New York Times journalist had a secret. Like so many others in media, science, the arts, and culture, he was on the government payroll.

In Atomic Bill, Vincent Kiernan presents the first biography of this highly influential figure. A Harvard Law graduate, in the 1930s Laurence was an up-and-comer at Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, a pioneer of “yellow journalism.” But his big break came when he was recruited to write much of the press on the Manhattan Project on the day President Truman incinerated Hiroshima. That crowned him as one of the leading experts on the nuclear bomb during the 1940s and ‘50s. Hailed by most as a skilled translator of science, critics saw him as a propagandist, cashing in on the militarization of science amid the new existential arms race. Laurence used his perch at the Times to reach new heights of fame and fortune in speechmaking, book writing, filmmaking, and radio broadcasting. But his work declined in quality as his relationship to power grew more lucrative, eventually leading to scandal and forced retirement over his connections to Robert Moses and the 1964 World’s Fair. Kiernan, a veteran science reporter and communications scholar (author of Embargoed Science), argues that Laurence “set the trend, common among today's journalists… to prioritize gee-whiz coverage” at the expense of critical reporting on science and technology.