Call number
623.4 CON
Collection
Publication
New York : Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2005.
Description
This book captures the drama of 27 perilous 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--freshly minted secretaries and worldly scientists contending with living conditions straight out of pioneer days, racing to build the first atomic bomb before Germany could. Oppenheimer was as arrogant as he was inexperienced, and few believed the 38-year-old theoretical physicist would succeed. Yet despite the obstacles, he forged a vibrant community through the sheer force of his personality.
Subjects
User reviews
LibraryThing member nbmars
Conant tells the story of the Los Alamos "Manhattan Project" from the distaff point of view, based largely on the memories of Office Manager Dorothy McKibbin (who worked out of 109 East Palace Avenue in Santa Fe). The army recruited thousands for the atom bomb project at Los Alamos, but didn't
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think about such details as families with children, daycare, schooling, laundry, the need for barbers, maids, places of entertainment, garbage, food supplies, cooking, doctors, hospitals, etc. Dorothy McKibbin played a large role in helping people adjust to the new city and vice versa. In addition to McKibbin's materials (including a diary), Conant draws on interviews with and papers by wives, children, and secretaries, as well as memoires from physicists who were part of the project. There's very little about physics or the bomb itself - the book can more accurately be described as being about building a city from scratch, instantaneously, all the while having to maintain secrecy for security reasons. In that sense it's very interesting, but fans of Oppenheimer won't be disappointed either. Conant, who is the granddaughter of James B. Conant (himself intimately involved with the Manhattan Project) and author of the very good book Tuxedo Park, is obviously sympathetic to Oppenheimer, but I believe she nevertheless gives a fair accounting of his problems with the Government. (And again she does so not from Oppenheimer's perspective but rather from the perspective of the denizens of Los Alamos.) And Conant begins and ends the book with the birth and death of Dorothy McKibbin, who stays the main focus throughout. After reading McKibbin's story, one feels pleased to see her finally getting the recognition she deserves for her pivotal role in facilitating the Manhattan Project. (JAF) Show Less
LibraryThing member Niecierpek
I listened to the abridged version, so I don't feel it would be fair to rate it, but I liked it.
LibraryThing member rennerra
Excellent story of Los Alamos. Gave you a real sense what it was like to live and work there during the Manhattan Project years.
LibraryThing member RavenousReaders
This book highlights the lives and stories behind the scientists and their families as the United States raced to build the atomic bomb.
--By Susan, Pima County Public Library
--By Susan, Pima County Public Library
LibraryThing member iammbb
Whilst in Santa Fe this summer, we picked up a couple of books about Los Alamos and Robert Oppenheimer.
109 East Palace serves as an interesting and illuminating, if not stellar, social history about the creation of and living conditions at Los Alamos.
Using Dorothy McKibben, the Santa Fean who ran
However, as she strays from this goal and begins to try to become more of an overall historian of the overarching events put into motion at Los Alamos, the book loses its focus and suffers from superficiality.
This superficiality became brutally apparent upon reading just a few pages of the other book we purchased in Santa Fe, American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin.
In comparison, American Prometheus is clearly the better crafted project but, considered on its own, 109 East Palace is a supremely serviceable entry into the subject matter.
109 East Palace serves as an interesting and illuminating, if not stellar, social history about the creation of and living conditions at Los Alamos.
Using Dorothy McKibben, the Santa Fean who ran
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the small office which served as the entry point for the secret Los Alamos installation, as the entry point for the story, Conant's first intention seems to be to provide us with the look and feel of the war time home of many of the best scientific minds of the era. As long as she is working towards this end, her book works.However, as she strays from this goal and begins to try to become more of an overall historian of the overarching events put into motion at Los Alamos, the book loses its focus and suffers from superficiality.
This superficiality became brutally apparent upon reading just a few pages of the other book we purchased in Santa Fe, American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin.
In comparison, American Prometheus is clearly the better crafted project but, considered on its own, 109 East Palace is a supremely serviceable entry into the subject matter.
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LibraryThing member MissErickson
This is a great social history of what life was like at Los Alamos during the highly secretive building of the atomic bomb.
LibraryThing member DHBarry
I'm only about halfway through the book, but this is fascinating stuff. A really great read.
It's not much for the science; it's all about Oppenheimer himself, and Leslie Groves, and the other physicists and machinists and engineers... The personalities. A truly terrific book. I would recommend it
It's funny; the atomic bomb has been around for some time now. And of course everyone knows at least the general outlines of the story of Los Alamos and Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the Enola Gay... Nothing new, right?
But this book puts it all into a different light. It makes the history human. All of these things are part of history; they happened in our fairly recent past. Not only that, but they are a significant part of history. No obscure battles in some country that no longer exists, lost in the mists of centuries. This was less than seventy years ago, and these events changed the world in ways that echo even now.
This book shares with you the thoughts and dreams and fears of those who made that history. How they lived, what they hoped for, why they felt compelled to do what they did....
This is an incredible story, and I'm enjoying it immensely. I would really highly recommend this book.
It's not much for the science; it's all about Oppenheimer himself, and Leslie Groves, and the other physicists and machinists and engineers... The personalities. A truly terrific book. I would recommend it
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for any fan of history.It's funny; the atomic bomb has been around for some time now. And of course everyone knows at least the general outlines of the story of Los Alamos and Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the Enola Gay... Nothing new, right?
But this book puts it all into a different light. It makes the history human. All of these things are part of history; they happened in our fairly recent past. Not only that, but they are a significant part of history. No obscure battles in some country that no longer exists, lost in the mists of centuries. This was less than seventy years ago, and these events changed the world in ways that echo even now.
This book shares with you the thoughts and dreams and fears of those who made that history. How they lived, what they hoped for, why they felt compelled to do what they did....
This is an incredible story, and I'm enjoying it immensely. I would really highly recommend this book.
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LibraryThing member gbelik
While this book spends enough time on the history and science of the Manhattan Project to set its place in time and history, the joy for me was in the story of the people involved and their interaction in the remarkable closed community of Los Alamos during the production of the atom bomb. I
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recently visited Santa Fe and stopped to look at the door to 109 East Palace, where new employees reported after they were told merely...."Come to Santa Fe, your nation needs you." The office was run by Dorothy McKibben, a young widow who devoted herself to the project and to its leader, Robert Oppenheimer, and whose unpublished autobiography is a major source for this book. The project grew and grew till there were thousands of people living at Los Alamos; they were isolated and sworn to total secrecy during the course of the project. It is an amazing story and very well told here. Show Less
LibraryThing member Jared_Runck
This fascinating book by the granddaughter of James B. Conant, who administrated the Manhattan Project, tells the "human story" of the creation of Los Alamos National Laboratory and the development of the nuclear bomb near the end of World War II. Though the story is framed as an account of Dorothy
Conant creates wonderfully vibrant characters out of what were perhaps the oddest assortment of geniuses ever assembled. It would have been very easy for the book to become little more than a side show of mad scientists, but Conant's passion for the story keeps the inevitable quirkiness authentic and, well, lovable. Genius scientists are rarely known for their "people skills" (Oppenheimer being a grand exception), but Conant is exceptionally sympathetic in her portrayal of these often difficult personalities. The one glaring exception is her portrayal of Edward Teller, who she clearly disdains. This is not a book about the A-bomb...it is a book about the community that created the A-bomb under some of the most unusual and strenuous circumstances humans could endure.
I found particularly gratifying her discussion of the immediate aftermath of Los Alamos' success, describing fully the way the various key scientists reacted to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Her portrayal of the moral ambiguity of that moment is a great moment to consider the ever more tangled web of technological advancement, militaristic foreign policy, and political expediency. In her telling, Oppenheimer's exceptionalism is rooted in his early and keen perception of the moral dilemma created by atomic energy, summarized by his famous quote after the successful test of the first atomic bomb: "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
Conant's carrying of the story into the McCarthy era, the revocation of Oppenheimer's security clearance and consultancy at the Atomic Energy Commission feels, to be honest, as if it goes a bit "beyond" where the story could have (perhaps should have) ended. And it is in that final section that her "crusading" for Oppenheimer's reputation as a great scientist and a great American--as well as her most damning remarks about Edward Teller's lack of character--becomes most strident. It's as if she wishes to provide the defense that her grandfather was unable to effectively mount at the height of the "Red Scare" of the 1950s.
I've always been fascinated by biographies of "great minds," so this book was fascinating in its incisive explorations of a COMMUNITY of such minds and how they interacted and reacted to each other. Conant does a tremendous job of drawing the reader into that story and making the reader care more about what happened to the people than about what happened to the project. It was a book long in the finishing, but a book that was worthy of the time.
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McKibbin, the administrator who ran the "front office" of the secret wartime lab at the Santa Fe address that serves as the book's title, it is clearly an homage to J. Robert Oppenheimer and his leadership of the wartime effort.Conant creates wonderfully vibrant characters out of what were perhaps the oddest assortment of geniuses ever assembled. It would have been very easy for the book to become little more than a side show of mad scientists, but Conant's passion for the story keeps the inevitable quirkiness authentic and, well, lovable. Genius scientists are rarely known for their "people skills" (Oppenheimer being a grand exception), but Conant is exceptionally sympathetic in her portrayal of these often difficult personalities. The one glaring exception is her portrayal of Edward Teller, who she clearly disdains. This is not a book about the A-bomb...it is a book about the community that created the A-bomb under some of the most unusual and strenuous circumstances humans could endure.
I found particularly gratifying her discussion of the immediate aftermath of Los Alamos' success, describing fully the way the various key scientists reacted to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Her portrayal of the moral ambiguity of that moment is a great moment to consider the ever more tangled web of technological advancement, militaristic foreign policy, and political expediency. In her telling, Oppenheimer's exceptionalism is rooted in his early and keen perception of the moral dilemma created by atomic energy, summarized by his famous quote after the successful test of the first atomic bomb: "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
Conant's carrying of the story into the McCarthy era, the revocation of Oppenheimer's security clearance and consultancy at the Atomic Energy Commission feels, to be honest, as if it goes a bit "beyond" where the story could have (perhaps should have) ended. And it is in that final section that her "crusading" for Oppenheimer's reputation as a great scientist and a great American--as well as her most damning remarks about Edward Teller's lack of character--becomes most strident. It's as if she wishes to provide the defense that her grandfather was unable to effectively mount at the height of the "Red Scare" of the 1950s.
I've always been fascinated by biographies of "great minds," so this book was fascinating in its incisive explorations of a COMMUNITY of such minds and how they interacted and reacted to each other. Conant does a tremendous job of drawing the reader into that story and making the reader care more about what happened to the people than about what happened to the project. It was a book long in the finishing, but a book that was worthy of the time.
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LibraryThing member scottcholstad
Pretty solid bio on one of the past century's more interesting and influential men. Well done.
LibraryThing member autumnesf
Really a very good look into what happened at Los Alamos.
LibraryThing member mapg.genie
An in-depth, enlightening look at the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, the challenges and frustrations, the amazingly high intellectual level of the physicists, the infrastructure needed to make it happen, family life or lack of it, then, the repercussions afterwards. It wasn't pretty.
LibraryThing member David-Block
An excellent book full of stories and history about the man who lead the building of the atomic bomb, and the great supporting cast of other players involved.
Awards
Southwest Books of the Year (2005)
Reading the West Book Award (Winner — Nonfiction — 2006)
Pages
xx; 425
ISBN
0743250087 / 9780743250085