Book Review - "The Girls Of Atomic City: The Untold Story Of The Women Who Helped Win World War II"

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Women
Who Helped Win World War II
written by
Denise Kiernan

The Travelling Toe is a member of a local Book Club called the Good Reads Book Club. Each member chooses a month during the year and is then responsible for presenting a review of the book they selected .Recently one of the members chose a book by Denise Kiernan, titled "The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story Of The Women Who Helped Win World II".

Below is an overview of the story from the book jacket

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 America - 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.  

Our member provided some interesting details from the book the about the daily living conditions at Oak Ridge:

• it was a camp-like environment including tents and trailers
• the employees were separated by races
• husbands and wives were separated
• average age was 27
• the work was very secret and often employees just disappeared without an explanition
• the camp was surrounded by bared wire
• there were check points at the entrances
• codes words had to be used

So what were these woman and men doing that was so important to the war effort?  Well, we have all heard of the Manhattan Project that took place in New Mexico, but the people at Oak Ridge provided the much needed materiel, enriched uranium, for the that project

Denise Kiernan
author

www.denisekiernan.com

The author of this book, Denise Kiernan, of course did a tremendous amount of research for this project. Some of the women who worked at Oak Ridge in it's hey-day, still live in that area are now in their 80's and 90's.  Denise was able to interview them for this book. The book became a bestseller the first week it was published.  Ms. Kiernan worked as a journalist and many of her articles were published in various newspapers and magazines. Plus she was the head writer for the first year of "Who Wants To be A Millionaire". 
Ms. Kiernan is a resident of Asheville, North Carolina.


Oak Ridge now houses The American Museum of Science and Energy which is open to visitors.  There you can learn more about the role that Oak Ridge played in the Manhattan Project.

American Museum of Science and Energy