Synopses & Reviews
They were told as little as possible.
Their orders were to go to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and report for work at a classified Manhattan Project site, a location so covert it was known to them only by the mysterious address: 109 East Palace. There, behind a wrought-iron gate and narrow passageway just off the touristy old plaza, they were greeted by Dorothy McKibbin, an attractive widow who was the least likely person imaginable to run a front for a clandestine defense laboratory. They stepped across her threshold into a parallel universe the desert hideaway where Robert Oppenheimer and a team of world-famous scientists raced to build the first atomic bomb before Germany and bring World War II to an end.
Brilliant, handsome, extraordinarily charismatic, Oppenheimer based his unprecedented scientific enterprise in the high reaches of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, hoping that the land of enchantment would conceal and inspire their bold mission. Oppenheimer was as arrogant as he was inexperienced, and few believed the thirty-eight-year-old theoretical physicist would succeed.
Jennet Conant captures all the exhilaration and drama of those perilous twenty-seven months at Los Alamos, a secret city cut off from the rest of society, ringed by barbed wire, where Oppenheimer and his young recruits lived as virtual prisoners of the U.S. government. With her dry humor and eye for detail, Conant chronicles the chaotic beginnings of Oppenheimer's by-the-seat-of-his-pants operation, where freshly minted secretaries and worldly scientists had to contend with living conditions straight out of pioneer days. Despite all the obstacles, Oppie managed to forge a vibrant community at Los Alamos through the sheer force of his personality. Dorothy, who fell for him at first sight, devoted herself to taking care of him and his crew and supported him through the terrifying preparations for the test explosion at Trinity and the harrowing aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Less than a decade later, Oppenheimer became the focus of suspicion during the McCarthy witch hunts. When he and James B. Conant, one of the top administrators of the Manhattan Project (and the author's grandfather), led the campaign against the hydrogen bomb, Oppenheimer's past left-wing sympathies were used against him, and he was found to be a security risk and stripped of his clearance. Though Dorothy tried to help clear his name, she saw the man she loved disgraced.
In this riveting and deeply moving account, drawing on a wealth of research and interviews with close family and colleagues, Jennet Conant reveals an exceptionally gifted and enigmatic man who served his country at tremendous personal cost and whose singular achievement, and subsequent undoing, is at the root of our present nuclear predicament.
Review
"This account...is invaluable for its glimpse of the quotidian during an extraordinary time and for its resurrection of [Dorothy] McKibben, 'who knew everyone in the project and virtually everything about it, except what they were making.'" Booklist
Review
"Vividly told, the interplay of personalities that would ultimately transform the world." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Conant has created an interesting and exciting portrait of the secret city of Los Alamos and its people." San Antonio Express-News
Review
"Much has been written about both Los Alamos and Oppenheimer, but no one has put together so well the tensions of birthing the bomb with the everyday life of dirty diapers and little bath water." Kansas City Star
Review
"An engaging portrait of life on the remote mesa that served as backdrop for the world's most audacious scientific enterprise..." Baltimore Sun
Synopsis
From the author of the bestselling Tuxedo Park comes the story of those thousands who came to a secret desert Shangri La, where the world's leading physicists raced to invent the atomic bomb and bring World War II to an end. of photos.
About the Author
Jennet Conant is the author of the 2002 New York Times bestseller Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II. A former journalist, she has written for Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ, Newsweek, and the New York Times. She lives in New York City and Sag Harbor, New York.
Table of Contents
Preface
One: Charmed
Two: A Most Improbable Choice
Three: The Bluest Eyes I've Ever Seen
Four: Cowboy Boots and All
Five: The Gatekeeper
Six: The Professor and the General
Seven: Summer Camp
Eight: Lost Almost
Nine: Welcome Distractions
Ten: Nothing Dangerous
Eleven: The Big Shot
Twelve: Baby Boom
Thirteen: Summer Lightning
Fourteen: A Bad Case of the Jitters
Fifteen: Playing with Fire
Sixteen: A Dirty Trick
Seventeen: Everything Was Different
Eighteen: A Rain of Ruin
Nineteen: By Our Works We Are Committed
Twenty: Elysian Dreamer
Twenty-one: Scorpions in a Bottle
Twenty-two: Fallout
Author's Note on Sources
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index