The Girls of Atomic City

The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II

By: Denise Kiernan

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents, consuming more electricity than New York City. But to most of the world, the town did not exist. Thousands of civilians - many of them young women from small towns across the South - were recruited to this secret city, enticed by solid wages and the promise of war-ending work. Kept very much in the dark, few would ever guess the true nature of the tasks they performed each day in the hulking factories in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains. That is, until the end of the war - when Oak Ridge's secret was revealed.

Drawing on the voices of the women who lived it - women who are now in their eighties and nineties - The Girls of Atomic City rescues a remarkable, forgotten chapter of American history from obscurity. Denise Kiernan captures the spirit of the times through these women: their pluck, their desire to contribute, and their enduring courage. Combining the grand-scale human drama of The Worst Hard Time with the intimate biography and often troubling science of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Girls of Atomic City is a lasting and important addition to our country's history.

©2013 Denise Kiernan (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

What a great fun educational story?

I was horrified by some of the things I learned as fascinated by others. Fantastic Nervation is always.

About the women

And the men of OakRidge, the reservation. A must read for anyone interested in the Manhattan project and WWII.

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

Retirement is a wonderful thing. You have time to read about subjects that interest you. Those subjects, for me, have always been about HISTORY OF ALL KINDS. Since my dad, from Tennessee, was in the Pacific Theater of War during WWII, this topic has always been number one. Diane Kiernan captured the personalities and the roots of the people from all over the US who traveled to Tennessee to work at THE SECRET CITY of Oakridge. Further she told the story of a first— the invention of the bombs, the surrender of the Japanese, and the end of World War II. GREAT BOOK. Thank you so much.

Scattered

An interesting story that couldn’t make of up its mind. Disappointed with the lack of depth regarding the women who worked on this project, lacking cohesiveness of their story along side the historical narrative. It seemed like this book was trying to be too many things.

More interesting if your from the area

We did not find the book very captivating but living in the area helped a lot. Is we did not live in NE TN I am not sure I could recommend it.

Not the greatest.

Hard to follow at times. Goes over the head of anyonee not educated in physics and chemistry.

wonderful

This telling of a too-neglected story is an important piece of history. Well-researched and clearly written.

Insightful and well-rounded

It took awhile to get into the more technical and political details I was expecting, but I appreciated the humanity revealed in the more personal accounts of ordinary people and extraordinary people. I feel I got a well-rounded account - many people's stories, insights into perceptions and social observations, science and industry lessons, and the roles of historical figures from various nations.

Wow! A Must Read!

Wow! A must read for American history. A few points of interest:

- Growing up, I didn't understand that this place was inhabited before it became Atomic City. They used eminent domain to kick multiple hundreds of people off of their generations old farms and businesses and homes. This left them with little financial resources and no home or land (the use of eminent domain is known to pay out very little compared to the actual value of the land) to start a new life and no form of livelihood because their farms were gone.
(It takes ten years from the moment a fruit tree is planted to have a normal harvest, but they didn't have funds to buy new land to buy and plant new trees.)
- Racism was not allowed on paper, but it existed very much in this Jim Crow state. Discrimination was rampant in housing, entertainment, and jobs.
- They didn't know what each was doing and had to remain silent about their work all throughout the project. Workers had no idea they were making a bomb, or at least they didn't know it was a bomb of that magnitude.
- I had to knock a star off because the reader did not pronounce Hiroshima correctly. She used the Americanized pronunciation with the emphasis on the first I and not the Japanese with emphasis on the O. If you're going to claim concern that we killed civilians, then pronounce the city as the Japanese do. This was my only beef with the book.
- She provided updates of the women 70 years after the Atomic City was formed.

My draw to this book was that it focused on the women of this project. There is another book about this topic as well that I look forward to reading also from the women's perspective.

It was fine

Interesting daily life details from a unique period in history. Took me awhile to finish because sometimes the pacing and anecdotes were a bit dry. Overall told a story I was previously unaware of.