Now a New York Times Bestseller!
The incredible story of the young women of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, who unwittingly played a crucial role in one of the most significant moments in U.S. history. The Tennessee town of Oak Ridge was created from scratch in 1942. One of the Manhattan Project’s secret cities, it didn’t appear on any maps until 1949, and yet at the height of World War II it was using … at the height of World War II it was using more electricity than New York City and was home to more than 75,000 people, many of them young women recruited from small towns across the South. Their jobs were shrouded in mystery, but they were buoyed by a sense of shared purpose, close friendships–and a surplus of handsome scientists and Army men!
But against this vibrant wartime backdrop, a darker story was unfolding. The penalty for talking about their work–even the most innocuous details–was job loss and eviction. One woman was recruited to spy on her coworkers. They all knew something big was happening at Oak Ridge, but few could piece together the true nature of their work until the bomb “Little Boy” was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, and the secret was out. The shocking revelation: the residents of Oak Ridge were enriching uranium for the atomic bomb.
Though the young women originally believed they would leave Oak Ridge after the war, many met husbands there, made lifelong friends, and still call the seventy-year-old town home. The reverberations from their work there–work they didn’t fully understand at the time–are still being felt today. In The Girls of Atomic City, Denise Kiernan traces the astonishing story of these unsung WWII workers through interviews with dozens of surviving women and other Oak Ridge residents. Like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, this is history and science made fresh and vibrant–a beautifully told, deeply researched story that unfolds in a suspenseful and exciting way.
As heard on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition.
One of Goodreads’ Most Popular Books of March 2013.
One of Amazon’s Editors’ Picks for Best Books of the Month (History)
One of Amazon’s Editors’ Picks for Best Books of the Month (Nonfiction)
One of Amazon’s Big Spring Books (History)
more
The true story of Oakridge,Tennessee and 8 of the young women who help change the tide of WWII. This is an amazing book. The true purpose of this secret city, it was established as part of the Manhattan Project, wasn’t known to them until after the war. A mixture of personal accounts and historic record this is a eye opening account of a often forgotten part of U.S. history.
So inspiring yet terrifying.
My grandparents live really close to Oak Ridge, TN, so I thought that this would be a great book to read about that area during World War II. I found it to be very informative and loved learning about the role that women played during the war.
The Girls of Atomic City is a bit like Debs at War, with the twist that these American girls 1) by and large were from quite unprivileged backgrounds in contrast to the likes of Princess Di’s aunt; and 2) had absolutely no idea that the factory where they worked was actually creating the material for the atomic bomb. The latter is probably the most fascinating aspect of Denise Kiernan’s story of Oak Ridge, Tennessee: virtually no one knew anything – and doesn’t seem to have given it too much thought. There was a war on, there was a job to do, and for most of these women, from the small towns and smaller farms of the rural south, there was a paycheck to earn, the size of which they’d never dared imagine.
In the age of social media and, yes, Edward Snowden, it’s also fascinating to contemplate what the government accomplished – buying and clearing land, hiring tens of thousands of people, building an entire town, to say nothing of the nuclear plant that was its raison d’être, and all without nearly anyone knowing. Following FDR’s death, even Harry Truman had to be briefed on the Oak Ridge facility, a revelation which left him gobsmacked. He would write, in fact, that learning of Oak Ridge left him feeling “like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”
I especially enjoyed the way in which Kiernan intertwines the history of Oak Ridge and the women who lived and worked there with the history of nuclear science itself, as well as the breadth of women she interviewed and ultimately profiled in this book. These women held jobs ranging from janitor to statistician to high level scientists and hailed from equally variable backgrounds. Although it can be hard at times to keep up with which character did what, when, and with whom, the cast of characters provides a comprehensive look at what went into the making of the atom bomb on a day-to-day, behind-the-scenes basis.
(This review was originally published at http://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2014/04/the-girls-of-atomic-city-untold-story.html)
This book was so Interesting. Stories of the women who volunteered to live and work in Oak Ridge all to help the war effort. Brave and courageous women.
Well researched and written. Much better than The Atomic City Girls book.
What does a woman do who lives in a small southern town with no way to escape the poverty and dire living conditions? The promise of a job lured the brightest and the best of the high school graduates. Also, the girls who knew how to take orders and not ask questions. The employment that would take most of them out of poverty was so secret that nobody knew it existed. True. Startling. Heart wrenching.
Excellent description of building the atomic bomb in the USA. Many facts presented that we knew nothing about.
This book focused on the building of the atomic bomb and the women involved in the day to day work to accomplish that.
Although the story was interesting, I found it to be overly long and difficult to finish. I did read to the end, but often had trouble staying awake. Not a page-turner, but an interesting chapter in history.