Daily Reporter staff reports
GREENFIELD — Hancock County Public Library’s “Brown Bag Book” club will discuss the civilian women behind the Manhattan Project.
Library assistant director Barb Roark will lead the discussion of Denise Kiernan’s oral history volume, “The Girls of Atomic City.” Participants are encouraged (but not required) to read the book in advance. To get a copy, inquire at the library’s information desk.
”At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents, consuming more electricity than New York City. But to most of the world, the town did not exist,” the book jacket states.
“Thousands of civilians — many of them young women from small towns across the South — were recruited to this secret city, enticed by solid wages and the promise of war-ending work. Kept very much in the dark, few would ever guess the true nature of the tasks they performed each day in the hulking factories in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains. That is, until the end of the war — when Oak Ridge’s secret was revealed.”
“The Girls of Atomic City” by Touchstone Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, in 2013.
