What a story. Well, multiple stories really which tie into a
larger one. The book follows multiple people who were brought together
during WWII for the Manhattan Project, to them just ‘the project’. Many,
but not all the people recruited to refine uranium for the project,
were women looking for work during the war. They were not told what they
were doing or why, simply given instructions to do their job and that
the project was to bring a speedy end to the war. They didn’t find out
what the project was until the bomb was dropped on Japan and it was
revealed to everyone on the radio that work had been done in Oakridge
Tennessee, where they all were living and working. I found it very
interesting how so many people were working on, at the time, the world’s
biggest science project and managed to keep it all a secret. The
atmosphere described from many personal accounts of those who lived at
Oakridge reminded me in a way of a documentary I’ve seen about life at
McMurdo Station Antarctica in that you become close to those who’ve
shared the experience, because it’s such a unique experience, it’s hard
for others to know how you feel. The book is roughly chronological and
begins with people who lived on the location of Oakridge, before it was
Oakridge, and follows a few people from around the country through the
job application process, to work and daily life on the compound, to the
end of the war and up to the modern day. It does on occasion move away
from Oakridge and give some information on Oppenhiemer and the test site
at Los Alamos. If you are interested in WWII or STEM (science,
technology, engineering, and math) history I recommend this book to you.
[If you enjoy this, you may also like the fictionalized DVD series
Bletchley Circle,
which features women
code breakers during WWII, in London England. If
you are looking for another non-fiction title, I recommend
Antarctica: A Year on the Ice for a glimpse into life of the scientific research outpost on Antarctica.]
[ official
Girls of Atomic City web site ] | [ official
Denise Kiernan web site ]
Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations
page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all,
or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the
course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see
more of this reviewers recommendations!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment