The Atomic City Girls in Around the World in 80 Books

Dec 27, 2019 Wes F rated it liked it · review of another edition

I actually read this book a bit by accident...a friend told me about a book on women who had worked at the WWII secret nuclear facility of Oak Ridge, Tennessee--and saw this book at my library and started reading it. I realized later that she wasn't talking about a novel--as this book is--but about a historical book on the Oak Ridge facility! Oh well, this was still an interesting book--and is based on the historical Oak Ridge and all that happened there as thousands of women worked unknowingly ...more

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May 01, 2018 Lisa of Hopewell rated it really liked it

Shelves: audio-books, read-in-2018

The Story:

June Walker is a local girl who comes to work in the top-secret “Engineering” works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 1944. She is paired with a self-made roommate fleeing her sharecropper heritage and soon attracts the notice of a Jewish-American physicist with whom she falls in love.

My Thoughts:

I admired June from the start. She had courage, but not that annoying “spunk” we read about. “Grit” was closer to the truth than “spunk,” but it doesn’t accurately describe her either. June’s attrac The Story:

June Walker is a local girl who comes to work in the top-secret “Engineering” works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 1944. She is paired with a self-made roommate fleeing her sharecropper heritage and soon attracts the notice of a Jewish-American physicist with whom she falls in love.

My Thoughts:

I admired June from the start. She had courage, but not that annoying “spunk” we read about. “Grit” was closer to the truth than “spunk,” but it doesn’t accurately describe her either. June’s attraction to Sam and Sam’s to June is the stuff that happens in intense situations away from home. The Peace Corps volunteer who falls for a “host-country national,” or the student assigned to shadow the foreign-exchange student who then falls in love with him — it’s that sort of thing. Sam loves the idea of a “forming” June, of educating her. June likes being with an unusually well-educated man who expresses opinions she is still almost afraid of holding.

CeCe, the roommate, cultivates the image of a Southern Belle to escape poverty. She evaluates soldier-dates only in terms of a future. She is a mercenary, protecting her carefully crafted image with a savagery that explains the old phrase “a velvet hand in an iron glove”. She is a true steel magnolia.

Though June doesn’t fully realize it, both girls are ambitious and hungry to better themselves. June’s pride in becoming a secretary — of finding work that truly suits her, illustrates much of what would later drive the “women’s liberation” movement of the early 1970’s.

But it was. June’s maturity about her relationship with Sam nearly leveled me. “If only…”, I thought, looking back at my own life. Wow.

Running alongside these two stories is that of Joe, a married “Negro” man separated from his wife due to a lack of housing for Negro families. While Negro couples could be employed they had to live separately in single-sex plywood shacks known as hutments. His young friend Ralph, like June, is looking to a new world.

One out-of-place scene:

I realize that even in World War II there were deeper thinkers around. But I found June’s reaction to the Army officer’s son’s Japanese flag — sent for Christmas by his Marine brother, to be wildly modern. I really could not envision an American of the time feeling as June did, though I’m sure there must have been someone like that, somewhere. They, like June, would have had to keep that to themselves.

One Other Tiny Thing:

While I imagine Oak Ridge was too great a cash-cow to stand on ceremony, I did wonder that Sam and June were not questioned on checking into a hotel. No wedding rings. Of course, people had trysts all the time back then — war is a superb catalyst for spur-of-the-moment hook-ups after all, but there was generally an element of subterfuge — of going along with the public morals. No matter — it was a blip. ...more

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Feb 08, 2022 Jen Pratt rated it liked it

This book chronicles some of the different teams that worked together to create the Atomic Bomb. Of course most of them had no idea what they were working on. I hadn’t known about Oak Ridge, Tennessee’s contributions to the Manhattan Project.

I really loved the story for the first part, but then it got a little frustrating. Many of the loose ends tied up well, but I didn’t just love the whole book. I do like that it gave perspectives of some of the scientists, some of the common workers, and even ...more

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Jan 05, 2019 Sk888888 rated it it was ok

Shelves: audiobook, ww-ii, challenge, xx-lucky-13-2019

If it wasn't for a challenge, I would have pulled the bookmark on this one. Not much history (for me) to learn, the book was more of a chick-lit than historical fiction. ...more

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