The Girls of Atomic City

By: Denise Kiernan

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

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.

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5 out of 5 stars

By Gotta Tellya on 01-14-15

Eye-opener!

I knew a tiny bit about Oak Ridge and its contributions during WWII, and I wanted to learn more. I also admire the important yet generally undervalued roles that women played in winning that war. This book covers a good portion of both subjects. I am glad that the author chose to tell much of this part of history through the stories of women who worked and lived at Oak Ridge during and, in some cases, after the war years. I was equally pleased that the author gave one of the best layperson-friendly explanations I have ever read of the nuclear enrichment process. Ms. Kiernan also does an excellent job of revealing how government control and secrecy were imposed during the development of the atomic bomb. Last but not least, her story lays out the truth about some chilling aspects of those times, such as secret experiments performed on unwitting American subjects, the coldly uncaring segregation of African-American workers, and the success of Russian spies in carting off US atomic secrets to their homeland. My only complaint re this audio version is about the narrator, Cassandra Campbell. Overall, she did a good job. Ms. Campbell has a pleasant voice. She avoided sounding overly dramatic and was never shrill. However, the pacing of her narration bothered me a bit. I would have preferred a more brisk reading--shorter pauses between sentences and paragraphs, and so on. The leisurely narration made me feel restless at times, wishing Ms. Campbell would ramp things up and get on with the story. Other than that, I very much enjoyed this book and will no doubt listen to some sections again in the near future.

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5 out of 5 stars

By Amazon Customer on 04-05-22

Wonderfully Told

I love how the author knit together the stories of each woman to tell such a historical event.

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3 out of 5 stars

By Lady Pamela on 01-15-16

Ok, but not great

This book was ok. I found it only mildly interesting. This is a part of American history that seems incredible in it's accomplishments, but the book was about the daily lives of women who lived it. To be fair, it appears well researched, but did not seem to grab me right from the start...the story of average people recovering from the depression era. Fascinating, the women who struck out on their own--another story like the WASPs or nurses in the Pacific theater with the Marines...to do their part in the war effort or to make a living or to just be out on their own. Even more incredible, the female Jewish German physicist who published papers about atomic features and could have broken the atomic code well before the 1940s, yet was (thankfully) ignored. One thing not discussed is current health problems for people who worked there. The book explained a lot, yet did not meet my expectations.

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