| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Inventing Los Alamos: The Growth of an Atomic Community. By Jon Hunner. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. xii, 288 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-8061-3634-0.)

At Work in the Atomic City: A Labor and Social History of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. By Russell B. Olwell. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004. x, 165 pp. $29.00, ISBN 1-57233-324-3.)

The best-known works on nuclear weapons treat the making of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), careers of nuclear scientists, strategic defense policy, and arms control. Jon Hunner and Russell B. Olwell focus on the social histories of the so-called atomic cities. Controlled first by the army as part of the Manhattan Engineering District (MED) and later by the AEC and the Department of Energy (DOE), Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, were company towns. Hunner examines Los Alamos from its inception in 1943 through 1957, following development and early testing of the hydrogen bomb. Olwell considers Oak Ridge from the 1940s through the 1990s. These scholarly monographs are based on secondary and printed primary sources, archives, and oral histories. Olwell used the Freedom of Information Act to uncover information about health and safety issues. The books are written clearly, aimed primarily at specialists, and jargon-free. The indexes of both are helpful; each contains photos, endnotes, and bibliographies. Hunner provides two maps, Olwell none. The authors do not grind ideological axes.

Hunner's main theme is how Los Alamos invented and reinvented itself during and after World War II. Established in 1943 as a wartime army post inhabited by 200 civilians and military, it had, by 1957, over 12,000 residents and the appearance and self-image of a model Cold War American town. Because his chronological scope is narrower and because Los Alamos was much smaller than Oak Ridge, Hunner provides more discussion of Los Alamos's evolution as a community than Olwell does for Oak Ridge. Inventing Los Alamos gives textured analysis of the scientific, residential, regional, and federal "spheres" that "influenced the growth of Los Alamos" (Hunner, p. 7).

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