109 East Palace cover art

109 East Palace

Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos

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109 East Palace

By: Jennet Conant
Narrated by: Anne Twomey
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About this listen

 They were told as little as possible. Their orders were to go to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and report for work at a classified Manhattan Project site, a location so covert it was known to them only by the mysterious address: 109 East Palace.

They were greeted by Dorothy McKibbin, an attractive widow who was the least likely person imaginable to run a front for a clandestine defense laboratory. They stepped through her threshold into a parallel universe, the desert hideaway where Robert Oppenheimer and a team of world-famous scientists raced to build the first atomic bomb before Germany and bring World War II to an end.

Despite all the obstacles, Oppie managed to forge a vibrant community at Los Alamos through the sheer force of his personality. Dorothy devoted herself to taking care of him and his crew, and supported him through the terrifying preparations for the test explosion at Trinity and the harrowing aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In this deeply moving account, Conant reveals an enigmatic man who served his country at tremendous personal cost and whose singular achievement, and subsequent undoing, is at the root of our present nuclear predicament.

©2005 Jennet Conant (P)2005 Simon & Schuster Inc. AUDIOWORKS in an imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division, Simon & Schuster, Inc. Americas History History & Philosophy Military Science State & Local United States Weapons & Warfare

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Critic reviews

"Conant brings to life the colorful, eccentric town of thousands that sprang up on a New Mexico mesa and achieved the unthinkable." ( Publishers Weekly)

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Wonderful insiders account

I have read several things on the making of the atomic bomb. A good combination is F.G. Gosling's Manhattan Project and this personal account by the lady that watched the door. It gives quite a personal story observing allot of the main characters that worked on the project such as Oppenheimer and Feynman. A few of her stories are told in Feynman's own books so it's great to get both accounts. Highly recommended.

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