Inventing Los Alamos: The Growth of an Atomic Community - Hardcover

Hunner, Jon

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9780806136349: Inventing Los Alamos: The Growth of an Atomic Community

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0806136340 ISBN 13: 9780806136349

Publisher: Univ of Oklahoma Pr, 2004

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Explores the momentous events that created the town, the lives of the families who lived there, and the impact this small community had on the creation and development of the Atomic Age.

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About the Author:

Jon Hunner is Assistant Professor and Director of Public History Program at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. His publications include Santa Fe: A Historical Walking Tour (co-author).

From Booklist:

This is a civic and sociological account of the birthplace of the atom bomb, covering the years 1942-57. In the latter year, historian Hunner explains, security fences were removed from the residential part of Los Alamos, signifying its metamorphosis from a secret military installation where many people roughed it in tents to a normal town with a baby-boom infrastructure of new schools and comfortable, suburban-style housing. Hunner taps into the wealth of memoirs about life in Los Alamos in this period, left by both nuclear physicists and their children, but he rounds out his treatment by paying attention to the experiences of groups lower on the Los Alamos totem pole, such as guards and maids. On the civics side, Hunner tracks community organizations, structures of governance, and its business--the design and testing of nuclear weapons. The bomb's early developmental signposts as they affected both construction and local attitudes about the cold war guide Hunner's studious narrative, an ably researched supplement to general histories about the bomb. Gilbert Taylor
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