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

Summary

They were told as little as possible.

Their orders were to go to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and reportfor work at a classified Manhattan Project site, a location so covert it wasknown to them only by the mysterious address: 109 East Palace. There, behind awrought-iron gate and narrow passageway just off the touristy old plaza, theywere greeted by Dorothy McKibbin, an attractive widow who was the least likelyperson imaginable to run a front for a clandestine defense laboratory. Theystepped across her threshold into a parallel universe—the desert hideaway whereRobert Oppenheimer and a team of world-famous scientists raced to build thefirst atomic bomb before Germany and bring World War II to an end.

Brilliant, handsome, extraordinarily charismatic, Oppenheimerbased his unprecedented scientific enterprise in the high reaches of the Sangrede Cristo mountains, hoping that the land of enchantment would conceal andinspire their bold mission. Oppenheimer was as arrogant as he wasinexperienced, and few believed the thirty-eight-year-old theoretical physicistwould succeed.

Jennet Conant captures all the exhilaration and drama ofthose perilous twenty-seven months at Los Alamos, a secret city cut off fromthe rest of society, ringed by barbed wire, where Oppenheimer and his youngrecruits lived as virtual prisoners of the United States government. With herdry humor and eye for detail, Conant chronicles the chaotic beginnings ofOppenheimer’s by-the-seat-of-his-pants operation, where freshly mintedsecretaries and worldly scientists had to contend with living conditionsstraight out of pioneer days. Despite all the obstacles, Oppie managed to forgea vibrant community at Los Alamos through the sheer force of his personality.Dorothy, who fell for him at first sight, devoted herself to taking care of himand his crew and supported him through the terrifying preparations for the testexplosion at Trinity and the harrowing aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Less than a decade later, Oppenheimer became the focus ofsuspicion during the McCarthy witch hunts. When he and James B. Conant, one ofthe top administrators of the Manhattan Project (and the author’s grandfather),led the campaign against the hydrogen bomb, Oppenheimer’s past left-wingsympathies were used against him, and he was found to be a security risk andstripped of his clearance. Though Dorothy tried to help clear his name, she sawthe man she loved disgraced.

In this riveting and deeply moving account, drawing on awealth of research and interviews with close family and colleagues, JennetConant reveals an exceptionally gifted and enigmatic man who served his countryat tremendous personal cost and whose singular achievement, and subsequentundoing, is at the root of our present nuclear predicament.