By Katrina R. MasonOur Price: $15.95 Our Item Code: childla Postage Code: book1
204 Pages, Twayne Publishers |
| Our Review | Opinion of the webmaster, subject to debate |
This is a fascinatingly strange book. It tells the tale of the early years of Los Alamos, though the eyes of the children of the scientists and other personnel stationed there. Primarily an oral history, it provides a unique look at a most unique place. Being a kid is sometimes tough in itself, but being a kid in a community surrounded by fences and guards, where daddy can't really say what he does all day, and everyone seems to be keeping some secret is on a level all its own. Even so, a great many of these children went on to become high achievers on their own, and enjoy great sucess. It was as if, unbeknownst to anyone, a major social experiment was taking place. Children of Los Alamos does a fine job chronicling that experiment. -- tm
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| Information from the Publisher | Always supportive |
"Children of Los Alamos is a grand achievement. It captures the unreal reality of the secret city where the atom bomb was born, depicts America in the 1940's, and presents a portrait of childhood - all at the same time."
--Rose DeWolf, Staff Writer, Philadelphia Daily News
"Katrina Mason has the skill to conceal the immense toil involved in projects like this. From a mountain of difficult material, she has made a powerful story that seems to tell itself."
-- Henry Taylor, former Poet Laureate of Virginia
Katrina R. Mason has interviewed a wide range of people who spent all or parts of their childhoods in Los Alamos, New Mexico- the place where scientists built the atomic bomb that ushered in the nuclear age. To create this engaging and provacative portrait of a place that has come to epitomize the scientific advances and moral ambiguities of this century. Mason has synthesized the recollections of those who lived in Los Alamos from its muddy beginnings in 1943 - when the town was an army secret and residents offically lived at P.O. Box 1663 - to the late 1950's, after the Laboratory had come under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission. Exploring how the children have delt with their often conflicting feelings about their parents' involvement in the creation of nuclear weaponry, Mason illuminates the personal and often very emotional dimensions of a fascinating historical era.Katrina R. Mason is a journalist who lives in Bethesda Maryland. She is a graduate of Smith College and received her M.A. in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania.
Table of ContentsIntroduction Keeping the Secret
Methodology Appendix: Biographical Notes on Interviewees Notes and References Bibliography Index
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