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

109 EAST PALACE: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos JENNET CONANT

Early in the 1940s, an odd little community sprang up in Los Alamos, NM. The inhabitants would call the place Lost Almost and sometimes regard it as a prison camp. There were guards, dogs, censored mail, and tapped phones. At the same time, there were families, schools, a golf course, and cocktail parties just like those of any other American town. This book, the story of the people of the Manhattan Project, was named for the nondescript office that served as the gateway to the LOS Alamos facility. Author Conant's primary source, Dorothy McKibben, was Project Director J. Robert Oppenheimer's secretary. McKibben was the sympathetic ear for many of the residents frustrated by the extraordinary security and secrecy at Los Alamos. Most families had no idea what the scientists among them were working on. Conant, granddaughter of a Manhattan Project administrator, previously wrote Tuxedo Park. A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II, another book about a war-era science lab. Her new book will please anyone looking for an unusual view of the Manhattan Project. Simon & Schuster, 2005, 448 p., b&w photos, hardcover, $26.95.