Recounts the experiences of the scientists, technicians, and families stationed at the site that planned and built the first atomic bomb, also known as the Manhattan Project.

A social history of New Mexico’s “Atomic City” Los Alamos, New Mexico, birthplace of the Atomic Age, is the community that revolutionized modern weaponry and science. An “instant city,” created in 1943, Los Alamos quickly grew to accommodate six thousand people—scientists and experts who came to work in the top-secret laboratories, others drawn by jobs in support industries, and the families. How these people, as a community, faced both the fevered rush to create an atomic bomb and the intensity of the subsequent cold-war era is the focus of Jon Hunner’s fascinating narrative history. Much has been written about scientific developments at Los Alamos, but until this book little has been said about the community that fostered them. Using government records and the personal accounts of early residents, Inventing Los Alamos, traces the evolution of the town during its first fifteen years as home to a national laboratory and documents the town’s creation, the lives of the families who lived there, and the impact of this small community on the Atomic Age.

"A light-hearted first-hand account of everyday life in the strange and secret community between 1943 and 1945"--P. [4] of cover.

From the bestselling author of Tuxedo Park, the extraordinary story of the thousands of people who were sequestered in a military facility in the desert for twenty-seven intense months under J. Robert Oppenheimer where the world's best scientists raced to invent the atomic bomb and win World War II. In 1943, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant, charismatic head of the Manhattan Project, recruited scientists to live as virtual prisoners of the U.S. government at Los Alamos, a barren mesa thirty-five miles outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thousands of men, women, and children spent the war years sequestered in this top-secret military facility. They lied to friends and family about where they were going and what they were doing, and then disappeared into the desert. Through the eyes of a young Santa Fe widow who was one of Oppenheimer's first recruits, we see how, for all his flaws, he developed into an inspiring leader and motivated all those involved in the Los Alamos project to make a supreme effort and achieve the unthinkable.

Get the Summary of Jennet Conant's 109 East Palace in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. "109 East Palace" by Jennet Conant chronicles the life of Dorothy McKibbin, a key figure in the Manhattan Project, and the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. Dorothy, a widow with a young son, takes a secretarial job in Santa Fe, unknowingly becoming part of the project led by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The book details the clandestine operations at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where scientists worked to create the world's first nuclear weapons...