109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos

Such an interesting and intriguing book. Loved every minute of it!I highly recommend reading this book.

Such a thorough and engaging journey with one of the most human characters to emerge from the shadows surrounding Los Alamos.

Book arrived in great condition , have not read it yet

Much has been written about the once secret Manhattan Project, the group of scientists who participated, and the 27 months to engineer the first atomic bomb.Jennet Conant's book, "109 East Palace" is unique because it examines the project from the viewpoint of those intimately involved, so to speak, a compendium of the day-to-day diaries of those involved. Conant describes not only the frustrations, deprivations, and petty squabbles, but also the simple pleasures and the lifelong friendships that were established during the enforced isolation of the group.The author tells story after story about the interactions of the scientists with the government, with the locals in nearby Santa Fe, and with each other. Vignettes allow readers to form their own conclusion regarding the character of the individuals. The stories are interesting; some are hilarious.One story about Robert Oppenheimer (Oppy) involved his relationship with a married women Kitty who was, by the time he married her, several months pregnant with his child. With fellow academics at the University of California Berkeley outraged by his behavior, Oppy told his friends that he was thinking about naming the child Pronto.It became evident early on that Edward Teller, jealous of Oppenheimer's appointment to direct the project at Los Alamos, did everything he could to challenge Oppy's authority and to create disharmony among the scientists. In a final act of vindictive betrayel, Teller testified in a government hearing that Oppenheimer should not be trusted.One of the sub-themes of the book was the scientists questioning the purposeful use of the A-bomb on Japanese civilians. After the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the consensus among the scientists, with a few notable exceptions like Edward Teller, was that the bomb should not be used again, and they made their opinion known in writing to the U.S. government.A great many of the scientists, when given the opportunity, quit the project in protest to the government's dropping of the second bomb. The overwhelming majority believed the planned development of the H-Bomb to be unconscionable.A central character in the book and in the lives of virtually everyone at Los Alamos was Dorothy McKibbin who had important and continuous interaction with everyone of the thousands of civilians working on the project. To many, Dorothy was the mother who listened to their problems, to everyone she was their contact with the outside world.Dorothy and Oppy developed a close and enduring friendship that lasted a lifetime. The two had much in common. Both were intelligent and well educated. Both had come years earlier to the Sante Fe tuberculosis sanitarium for treatment, and both after a time came to love the Sangre de Christo hills and surroundings.When they met for the first time, during the planning of the project, in less than a minute, both decided they wanted to work with the other.

Maybe the best book I’ve read this year since Hemingway’s boat, it flows with excitement and cohesiveness and tells the story as if told by a phantom that’s lurking around Los Alamos , hiding in every room and recording every feeling and word . Exquisite read.

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A brilliant account of the Manhattan Project, the development of the atomic bomb, and its key players and after-effects. I have sampled many books on this subject, varying from very factual accounts of the science and politics to very personalised memoirs and biographies. This is the only book so far on the subject that I have managed to read all the way to the end without skipping anything. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the subject.It is very easy to follow, even for those who know little about the history, and it presents the story and the facts and the people in a very human way. By the end of the book, which ends with the last days of several of the key players, I was left feeling like I knew these people, touched by their passing and taking a moment to pause and consider their lives and work and how everything came together to form what is now regarded as one of the most tragic offences in military history, a unique episode in our semi-recent past. I did find myself having several of those "what if?" moments where you consider how one minor detail being different could literally have changed the course of history on a worldwide scale. This is particularly true of Dorothy's part in the project and it is fascinating to see this civilian/military endeavour described almost first hand.Having already been familiar with the basic facts from history lessons, I found myself appreciating what I already knew on a much more personal level and in a much more detailed and 'real' way - thinking about these big historical events in everyday terms is often difficult and most people tend to retain only important dates and one-line biographies, rather than an accurate overall picture. Reading the book, I felt drawn into a truly unique society that was formed nearly 70 years ago now, but feels somehow recent - it wasn't within my lifetime but it is within living memory and it feels like a modern tale that you can relate to in a way that you may never be able to relate to something that happened prior to the industrial revolution or in ancient Greece.It summarises a lot of content into a readable, simple story peppered with quotations from those involved and snippets of contemporary letters and memos. The foreword includes a quote from the author's grandfather and administrator of the Manhattan Project, James Conant, which sums up the book in many ways: "They won't believe you, when the time comess that this can be told. It is more fantastic than Jules Verne."With 109 East Palace, Jennet Conant takes a story which is in many ways fantastic and unbelievable, and makes it seem as realistic as it actually was, fascinating and compelling, a reminder of an amazing human achievement with a greater impact upon the world than the key individuals perhaps realised at the time. Ethical and moral questions abound and you can summon up some amount of empathy for everyone described in the book. That is what makes this book, in my opinion, very well written.That said, my inner grammar Nazi was dismayed and disappointed to find that there is not a single possessive apostrophe in this entire book. It is absolutely full of references to "Oppenheimers hat" and "Morrisons wife" and there are absolutely no apostrophes on the horizon. There are also a few missing words here and there and some maybe-typo-maybe-mistake issues (slight for sleight, an incorrect use of a 'sic'). The author being a journalist and professional writer, and the book presumably having been proof read and edited, this astounded me. It was only a mild annoyance to be honest and it didn't hamper my understanding or enjoyment to any great extent, but worth noting nonetheless. Hopefully these errors will be corrected in future editions if this is pointed out.It also survives the Kindle test - it is well laid out and not riddled with typographical and spacing problems. The black and white pictures at the end lend themselves well to this format and all of the indexing and footnotes are really well executed and without bugs.

I read this book because it was on the Book Club list. I cannot pretend a serious interest in the subject, however some of this book was extremely interesting and informative. Far too much of it was devoted to background material, with only passing reference to really fascinating items. I felt the writer had included every single fact available. I actually skipped quite a large portion to get to the point of the book, and then read the rest later when I was better able to recognise the context.

.... but you have to wonder why? There is a relationship between the author and one of the people involved in the Los Alamos project and she has thrown in just about every fact that she could lay her hands on (and an awful lot of stuff that must surely only be conjecture)? This is a fascinating episode in American history. Some very heavy editing would have made this a more compelling read.

Very interesting read - having visited many of the locations in the book, it was superb reminiscence. Delivered expediently too...

A great history lesson.