Children of Los Alamos : an oral history of the town where the atomic age began /

This reviewer often tells junior high school social studies classes that history is what is happening all around them. Certainly that observation is especially applicable to the subjects of this book, the children (and a few of the adults) who lived at Los Alamos during the first decade of this "secret city." It would be easy to dismiss this collection of reminiscences as a minor footnote in the vast literature spawned by the 50th anniversary of the atomic bomb. But to do so would be a mistake, for here, better told than in many sources, one finds the human story behind the scientific triumph and moral dilemma associated with this place. One meets the laborers and locals, Hispanics and Native Americans, whose role in creating both the bomb and the town has been eclipsed in accounts that focus solely on the scientific and military personnel. This portrayal of the family life, the social life, the everyday reality of the youngest residents of this unique yet surprisingly mundane community creates a backdrop against which both the brilliance and the horror of the bomb stand in stark relief. On another level, the book can be read for its account of how this artificial society, drawn from such diverse national, ethnic, religious, educational, and economic backgrounds, created its own forms of stratification and class. General. L. W. Moore formerly, University of Kentucky