Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Denise Kiernan has succeeded in her new book, "The Girls of Atomic City," to tell the story of Oak Ridge, TN, during the Manhattan Project in a way that is unique and gives insight until now hidden. Writers who have focused on this story before have either featured the technical details or have focused on the overall and truly amazing accomplishment that ended a World War having already killed 54,000,000 people! A great story, however, told. But, Denise takes a much more intimate and personal approach to telling this amazing story in Oak Ridge (where 60% of the approximately $2 billion "Project" was spent) using the eyes (and memories) of some of the working ladies who actually did the real work of separating uranium (without knowing it), checking the leaks in pipes (not knowing where the pipes went), keeping the statistical data, doing the hard work of a janitor, a chemist (who got closest to the "product") and secretaries who saw documents they could never discuss. This approach results in a more realistic telling of the day to day activities in Oak Ridge and the government sites of X-10, Y-12, K-25 and S-50. The intrigue springs from every page! The stories of these nine ladies, (Helen, Colleen, Celia, Toni, Jane, Kattie, Virginia, Dot and Rosemary), each unique, yet each holding much in common, is bound together by Denise's wonderfully talented skill as a writer. She paints a composite picture of Oak Ridge and the Manhattan Project that will become a classic in the literature of this extraordinary historical accomplishment that has led to so many technological advances of the Nuclear Age. This amazing world changing experiment was begun using many women from various backgrounds as workers. The interviews and detailed memories of the lives Denise touched while researching this book have produced more than a mere book, she has created lasting relationships with the last of the living who actually experienced something many cannot imagine. They were personally involved in what has been labeled the most significant military industrial scientific breakthrough in the history of the world. Remember, these nine represent literally thousands of other women who worked just as diligently, just as courageously, to help win that awful war. Denise captures the grit, the determination and the resultant exuberance when their efforts produced that glorious peace stopping the killing. Reading "The Girls of Atomic City" is a delightful and spellbinding tale that were it not true would be fiction of the highest order, but it is real...these women lived it. Denise has captured it. The book is a must read for anyone who studies the Manhattan Project history or especially the history of Oak Ridge, TN, and who wants to share the insights of these women who were there when it happened.