109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos - Hardcover

Conant, Jennet

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743250079 ISBN 13: 9780743250078

Verlag: Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

Book by Conant Jennet

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Reseña del editor:

In 1943, Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant, charismatic head of the Manhattan Project, recruited scientists to live as virtual prisoners of the U.S. government on a barren mesa thirty-five miles outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. Los Alamos was a secret city, a primitive barbed-wire-enclosed encampment whose makeshift dormitories and labs housed scientists, their young families, and some of the most advanced scientific equipment in the world. 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. The women came to Los Alamos over the Army's objections. But Oppenheimer insisted it would be the only way to recruit the world-class physicists he needed and keep them reasonably sane and content during the many months - even years - it would take to create this new weapon. Conant shows how the stringent security, lack of privacy, spartan living conditions and loneliness of their isolated mountain hideaway drove some residents to the brink of despair. Yet only a handful gave up and left. Oppenheimer was a leader who, for all his flaws, inspired great devotion, and the author tells the story of the patriotism, sacrifice and triumph of the bomb project through the eyes of a young Santa Fe widow who was one of his first and most loyal recruits.

Biografía del autor:

Jennet Conant's profiles have appeared in Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ, Newsweek, and The New York Times. She was given unrestricted access to Loomis' and Conant's papers, as well as to previously unpublished letters and documents, and she interviewed Loomis' many family members, friends, and colleagues. The granddaughter and grand niece of two of the scientists from the Tuxedo Park community, she is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and Columbia University's School of Journalism. She lives in New York City and Sag Harbor with her husband, "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft, and their son.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0743250079
• ISBN 13: 9780743250078
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 448