Denise Kiernan is a multiple New York Times bestselling author of narrative nonfiction books including The Girls Of Atomic City, The Last Castle, and We Gather Together. While writing The Girls Of Atomic City, Kiernan not only tracked down and interviewed countless individuals who worked directly on the Manhattan Project, she also consumed virtually every book ever written on the subject and spent endless days in the bowels of the National Archives deep-diving into the institution’s Atomic Energy Commission holdings. She served as a member of the Manhattan Project National Historic Park Scholars Forum in Washington, D.C., helping shape the topics and interpretive planning for this new national park. She has spoken at institutions across the country on topics covered in her book, and was also awarded the 2014 American Political Science Association Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for the best book published in the United States on government, politics, or international affairs.
By Denise Kiernan
The Girls of Atomic City tells the unbelievable true story of young women during World War II who worked in a secret city dedicated to making fuel for the first atomic bomb—only they didn’t know that.
This narrative non-fiction book introduces the reader to this world through the eyes of the real women who lived and worked there during the war. The Girls of Atomic City is a story of patriotism and purpose, of mystery and suspicion, survival and remembrance.
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By John Hersey
It is a rare and wondrous thing when a book can at once inform and move you. Author John Hersey grips readers with his narrative style, by elegantly weaving together personal stories and key information. The result is a book that causes one to both think and feel. An invaluable contribution to the vast library of World War II works and one of my all-time favorite reads.
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By Richard Rhode
This Pulitzer Prize-winning book is the be-all, end-all of reads on the Manhattan Project. Full stop. If I were forced to recommend just one book to immerse yourself into every aspect of the project, from the science to the politics and more, it would be this one. Don’t let the tremendous page-count scare you off—Rhodes is a smooth, readable, and engaging writer.
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By Dan Zak
Zak is an award-winning reporter for the Washington Post where his gift for prose is on regular display. When he turned his skillful journalist’s eye toward nuclear weaponry and present-day anti-nuclear activism, the result was a book that takes readers through the night and aftermath of a break-in at one of the most secure facilities in the country, and a look at the moments and forces in history that shaped the people involved.
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By David McCullough
I cannot imagine a book that David McCullough might write that I would not want to read. This impeccably researched and wonderfully intriguing book about President Harry. S. Truman—who was in the White House when the decisions to release the first-ever atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were made—gives an intimate and informative look at one of the key figures in both the Manhattan Project and World War II history.
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By Lansing Lamont
Published in 1965 and written by then Washington and foreign correspondent of Time Magazine Lamont, this book remains for me an exceptionally compelling narrative history. The lens here is focused tightly on the events leading up to the first-ever test of an atomic bomb, which was codenamed “Trinity.” Obsessively researched, yes, but it’s Lamont’s writing that makes readers feel as though they are there, in the vastness of the desert, witnessing a happening that changed the world forever.
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