Books like The Wives of Los Alamos — picked by fans

I discovered Marianne Wiggins through this stellar novel, which was a National Book Award Finalist.

It’s an epic love story spanning many decades and two wars, and what I especially appreciated was Wiggins’ ability to weave in both the beauty and physics of light, the science of electricity and radiation.

These elements are present when the story begins, and when the story leaves Oak Ridge, where the uranium was enriched, the atomic bomb and fallout continue to follow the couple’s son, aptly named Lightfoot. I felt like I became Lightfoot, navigating my own views and understanding of the atomic age and its moral complexities.

A spare love story is the vehicle for Eleanor, the main character, to grow emotionally and artistically in her adopted desert landscape.

Through an artist’s eyes and the writer’s beautiful prose, I viewed the dry mesas and encountered the mystery of Leo Kavan, who collapses on Eleanor’s property after escaping the confines of “The Hill,” code name for Los Alamos.

I wrote to Gallagher to find out if Leo was based on Leo Szilard, a Hungarian physicist who conceived the idea of a chain reaction that leads to the invention of the atomic bomb. She replied, "Fiction is so strange, don’t you think? A character starts out based on Leo Szilard and ends up being entirely himself, Leo Kavan." So true.

I appreciate that no one gets off easily in this exquisite novel, appropriate when writing about such complex US history.

I admittedly balked at a dense poetry book.

I’m more of a prose reader. But I soon found myself utterly captivated by this Greek chorus of voices from the Manhattan Project—scientists, wives, receptionists, officers, locals, among others. I admired Canaday’s use of subheadings to keep me organized as many of these characters weave in and out, making multiple appearances. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kitty Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, Gen. Groves, Albert Einstein, are just some of the famous voices included.

After reading this arresting, accomplished, impeccably researched collection, I learned that Canaday studied literature and physics in college. In Canaday’s deft hands, through the techniques of poetry and the magic of creating personality, I felt the power of what was being built and the power of conflicting human emotions surrounding the urgent task at hand.

There is much I admire in Hall’s experimental novel revolving around the charismatic, enigmatic father of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer.

Even the book’s title, Trinity, named after the first atomic test that took place in Los Alamos, isn’t easy to pin down. Because Hall makes clear even Oppenheimer doesn’t appear to be fully cognizant of why he named the historic test “Trinity.” That ambiguity shadows all her characters, who are used as prisms in a kaleidoscopic attempt to focus on the many parts of Oppie. 

In my opinion, Hall succeeds in revealing something of his character and mindset that a well-researched biography can’t fully give us. I found Trinity to be a brilliant way to examine, from the human side, the many contradictions behind winning the race to the atomic bomb.

I like this book because it is well-researched and reveals the politics of mothering. As Vanessa Olorenshaw notes, “mothers’ rights are the flotsam left behind on the ocean surface of patriarchy.” This is a must-read book for all mothers and daughters because the women’s movement has yet to prioritize the rights of mothers to not be the world’s caregivers.

In 1789 Lieutenant Fletcher Christian and 18 mutineers turned on the “insufferable” Captain Bligh of the HMS Bounty and set him and 18 loyal crew members adrift in the South Pacific.

The story has loomed so large in popular imagination it has inspired at least 14 books and five films. But the late British journalist, historian, and diver Alexander McKee brought the disparate elements of the story together in perhaps its most accurate, entertaining, and coherent form–way back in 1962.

There’s always more than one side to a story and McKee interrogates them ruthlessly. The journalist in me applauds his efforts to comb through historical records, personal journals, and every piece of flotsam and jetsam he finds to present one of the most compelling true, sea stories ever written.

Not one of villains and heroes, but of the burdens of leadership and the fraying bonds of loyalty within one of… show more.

Leo Szilard was one of the most interesting people of the 20th century. His first love was physics, and he is given credit for being the first to think about what would happen if someone could create a nuclear chain reaction. He worked closely with Fermi to make that chain reaction actually happen in Chicago in 1942, and was one of those who was able to see the great tragedy of the discovery, leading efforts in 1945 to try and prevent the use of the weapon against Japan. He was a colorful man, a bon vivant who loved to spend money on good clothes and fine food, and had the kind of mind that flitted from one idea to the next with the brilliance of a Monarch butterfly. His later years were devoted to the biological sciences. Lanouette/Silard have written the classic work on him. 

Ulam was a Polish mathematical prodigy, publishing significant mathematics by the time he was 20. He was part of the rich Polish math community centered around Stefan Banach. Unlike most, he was heading to the United States in 1939 (with his younger brother) when Germany invaded Poland. All the rest of his family were murdered by the Nazis. He on the other hand ended up in Los Alamos, providing critical help on the Manhattan Project. Later in life, he wrote this book, his autobiography. Based on his history, one could well think that it would be a book full of tragic grief. Instead, it is a pean to the joys of doing mathematics and of living a life full of mathematics, without downplaying the horrors of the mid-twentieth century. 

Not – repeat not – because I am its editor and wrote more than half of it but mainly because this is I believe the one-volume, one-stop-shop book to have on your shelves or digitally on your computer if you want to gain something like a complete understanding and appreciation of the world or rather worlds of Ancient Greece. I can do no better than quote from the ‘blurb’ provided online by the C.U.P. itself.

It is sumptuously illustrated throughout, almost entirely in colour. It offers fresh interpretations of the whole range of ‘Classical’ Greek culture, different aspects of which are expertly handled by members of an international cast of top-notch scholars both male and female. These aspects include: the influences of the environment and economy; the effects of interstate tensions; the implications of (bi-, homo-, hetero-normative) sexuality; the experiences of workers, soldiers, slaves, peasants and women; and the roles… show more.

Coincidentally this scholarly collection of essays appeared in the same year as my 2nd Book Pick. The original versions of the papers were delivered at ‘Penn’ (the University of Pennsylvania, Professor Rosen’s home) at the second ‘Penn-Leiden Colloquium on Ancient Values’ (Leiden being Prof. Sluiter’s base). Free speech had two distinct terms and expressions in ancient Greece, one more expansive than the other. Parrhesia could be understood as frankness of expression, not necessarily political. Isegoria, on the other hand, was narrowly political and applied only to adult male free citizens: it’s best translated exactly as equal freedom of public political speech. One reviewer of the collection picked up on the existence of a rivalry between an official/state version of historical facts and the—more truthful—version given by an individual writer, explicitly referencing Salman Rushdie.