The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
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.
Boing Boing has a lot more photos from the book
here.
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