Book description
In 1942, the US government began construction on a sixty-thousand-acre planned community named Oak Ridge in a rural area west of Knoxville, Tennessee. Unmarked on regional maps, Oak Ridge attracted more than seventy thousand people eager for high-paying wartime jobs. Among them were author Emily Strasser's grandfather George, a chemist.…
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Why read it?
1 author picked Half-Life of a Secret as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This book blends personal history with national, and even international history. The ability to write at multiple scales, blending in poetry and imagery, displaying incredible vulnerability, is just so impressive. Strasser interrogates so many scales and versions of violence, challenging us to think about the many, many ripple effects of the harm entailed in building, and ultimately exploding, a nuclear bomb.
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