What do you think?
Rate this book
Half-Life of a Secret: Reckoning with a Hidden History
In 1942, the US government began construction on a sixty-thousand-acre planned community named Oak Ridge in a rural area west of Knoxville, Tennessee. Unmarked on regional maps, Oak Ridge attracted more than seventy thousand people eager for high-paying wartime jobs. Among them was author Emily Strasser's grandfather George, a chemist. All employees―from scientists to secretaries, from military personnel to construction workers―were restricted by the tightest security. They were provided only the minimum information necessary to perform their jobs.
It wasn't until three years later that the citizens of Oak Ridge, and the rest of the world, learned the true purpose of the local industry. Oak Ridge was one of three secret cities constructed by the Manhattan Project for the express purpose of developing the first atomic bomb, which devastated Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
In Half-Life of a Reckoning with a Hidden History , Emily Strasser exposes the toxic legacy―political, environmental, and personal―that forever polluted her family, a community, the nation, and the world. Sifting through archives and family memories, and traveling to the deserts of Nevada and the living rooms of Hiroshima, she grapples with the far-reaching ramifications of her grandfather's work. She learns that during the three decades he spent building nuclear weapons, George suffered from increasingly debilitating mental illness. Returning to Oak Ridge, Strasser confronts the widespread contamination resulting from nuclear weapons production and the government's disregard for its impact on the environment and public health. With brilliant insight, she reveals the intersections between the culture of secrecy in her family and the institutionalized secrecy within the nuclear industry, which persists, with grave consequences, to this day.
It wasn't until three years later that the citizens of Oak Ridge, and the rest of the world, learned the true purpose of the local industry. Oak Ridge was one of three secret cities constructed by the Manhattan Project for the express purpose of developing the first atomic bomb, which devastated Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
In Half-Life of a Reckoning with a Hidden History , Emily Strasser exposes the toxic legacy―political, environmental, and personal―that forever polluted her family, a community, the nation, and the world. Sifting through archives and family memories, and traveling to the deserts of Nevada and the living rooms of Hiroshima, she grapples with the far-reaching ramifications of her grandfather's work. She learns that during the three decades he spent building nuclear weapons, George suffered from increasingly debilitating mental illness. Returning to Oak Ridge, Strasser confronts the widespread contamination resulting from nuclear weapons production and the government's disregard for its impact on the environment and public health. With brilliant insight, she reveals the intersections between the culture of secrecy in her family and the institutionalized secrecy within the nuclear industry, which persists, with grave consequences, to this day.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published April 4, 2023
23 people are currently reading
558 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
May 15, 2023
I really enjoyed this book! I don't get through many non-fiction books because I usually find the writing to be too dry (even in subjects I am interested in). In this case, though, I found the writing to be captivating and easy to follow. I appreciated how Strasser blended historical, sociological, and scientific information, as well as her own journey, into the unfolding story of her grandfather, his (and Oak Ridge's) role in the US nuclear weapons program, and his impact on her own family history.
For full disclosure- I know the author of this book, but I promise that only biases my review a little bit. :)
Would recommend to anyone interested in: the Manhattan Project, the South, the Cold War, intergenerational trauma, pollution, family dynamics, chemistry, reckoning with sin, or memoirs.
For full disclosure- I know the author of this book, but I promise that only biases my review a little bit. :)
Would recommend to anyone interested in: the Manhattan Project, the South, the Cold War, intergenerational trauma, pollution, family dynamics, chemistry, reckoning with sin, or memoirs.
April 23, 2023
This book is a beautiful exploration of stories told and untold, examined and obfuscated -- the personal, familial, national, and cultural blends of fact and fiction that can impact, guide, change, and traumatize us. Strasser's profile of Oak Ridge, her grandfather's work there, and its role in the ongoing nuclear arms race is fascinating and compelling, but her stories extend far beyond the gates of East Tennessee's weapons facility. Half-life of a Secret is informative, moving, and very highly recommended!!
August 8, 2023
Disclaimer: I know Emily Strasser personally and, though we have not crossed paths in the better part of a decade, consider her a friend. It is my belief that the following review is untainted by personal attachment to the author, but if you view any such attachment as anathema to an objective critique, you have been fairly warned.
Having covered that base, let me not bury the lede any further: This is an extraordinary book, in its writing, in its truthfulness, in its accuracy, and in its undeniable importance. I enthusiastically recommend it for all readers from young adult up without hesitation. Everyone needs to know the truth Strasser commits to telling with such integrity. As Strasser explains with an exceptional balance of passion and restraint, secrets erode the soul, both the individual and the collective soul. Healing is not possible until the veil of secrecy is lifted.
I was in elementary school when I first learned of the Hiroshima bombing; exactly what my age was I can't be certain, but it is safe to say it was represented by a single digit. The discovery led to the mild trauma of realizing for the first time that my parents may not be a completely reliable source of information. For when I shared my horror at the reality of my country's introduction of nuclear weapons to the realm of earthly war, my mother quickly toed the national line, citing all the American and Japanese lives purportedly saved by bringing the Pacific theater of World War II to a swift end. Interestingly, she set that number at a rather preposterous 7 million, an order of magnitude greater than the half-million to 1 million range generally presented by A-bomb apologists ever since the Truman administration. Whether that beefing up of the number was a simple error of memory on my mother's part, or a deliberate choice in the face of her young son's habit of intense moralizing, I will never know. But I do know that the ethics of nuclear weaponry (if that phrase is anything other than a hopeless oxymoron) have been a personal obsession of mine ever since. Hence, as soon as I learned of the publication of this book by a writer whose previously published essays always impressed me greatly, it leapt to the top of my "must read" list.
In Half-Life of a Secret, Strasser in fact investigates an intricate web of dozens, if not hundreds of secrets—national, environmental, and familial. The origins of those secrets vary, from the universal instincts to defend the actions of those we love and protect those we love from harsh truths, to overzealous patriotism and deliberate government deception. In brief, in her youth, Strasser fell in love with her family's lake house not far from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a town created by the federal government as part of the Manhattan Project. A town that came into existence for one purpose: to facilitate the development of the most devastating weaponry ever created. As she grew, she would gradually discover the connection between her family and the horrific bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that she learned about in school: her grandfather, a chemist, came to Oak Ridge as a participant in the Manhattan Project mission. Among other responsibilities, he worked on producing the enriched uranium that fueled the first fission bombs, including those that obliterated much of two Japanese cities. He stayed on at Oak Ridge throughout his working life, ultimately playing a role in the creation of hydrogen (fusion) bombs hundreds of times more powerful than the bombs that changed global war forever.
Officially, no one at Oak Ridge was to know what exactly their work was aimed at creating, other than vague notions of patriotism and somehow helping to secure victory in the war. Certainly, many workers genuinely had no idea, and would not know the purpose of their work until after the grotesquely named "Little Boy" detonated in the Hiroshima sky. Realistically, however, the scientists working at Oak Ridge, similar synthetic towns, and other top-secret facilities around the U.S. had more of a sense of what it was all about, simply because they knew the materials they were working with and what they were tasked with doing with them. But all in Oak Ridge lived by a strict code of silence, and any who grew cavalier with that code found themselves tracked by government agents and interrogated.
That tale alone would easily fill a 300-page book, but Strasser's quest for truth is relentless enough to plunge her ever deeper into the entangled threads of buried (a word that often applies literally) truths. Learning about her grandfather's role in the nuclearization of weaponry comes more or less concurrently with learning of his struggles with alcoholism, depression, and bipolar disorder (then called mania or manic depression), struggles shared to varying degrees by many other members of her family. Researching those issues leads her to investigate the multiple forms of environmental degradation surrounding Oak Ridge as a result of the furious drive to create more and more world-threatening weapons, more and more quickly. And so the web extends, farther and farther, literally (as Strasser carefully explains with meticulously gathered data) to touch every living thing on Earth.
To take on the exploration of such broad swaths of that web in such a compact book is an incredibly ambitious undertaking, and I marvel at the degree to which Strasser succeeds in assembling the puzzle pieces. Or more accurately, succeeds in laying out the puzzle pieces thoughtfully enough to allow the reader to embark on assembling them meaningfully. I will admit, however, that this success occurs somewhat unevenly over the course of the book. The extended passages where Strasser narrates her investigative process in detail at times detract a bit from the book's forward momentum. To a degree, that bogging down is altogether appropriate, as it perfectly demonstrates how difficult it is to draw nearer to truth when entire structures, be they government devices or family habits, have come into existence to steer one away from the target. Nevertheless, I felt that this point might have been demonstrated once or twice too often.
By contrast, when Strasser shares her findings with a more compact summary of the process that led her to them, the effect is positively spellbinding. She lays bare the realities of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, and all the casualties it has inflicted, from the uranium mines of Africa to civilian cities in Japan, from entire Pacific islands to fallout-drenched U.S. towns, with unyielding courage. I mentioned my childhood discussion with my mother early in this review primarily to show that due to my own obsession, I came into this book with far more knowledge of the history of The Bomb than most. Yet even with that background, Half-Life of a Secret immensely added to my knowledge, understanding, and moral struggles. All of which I welcome with the deepest gratitude.
Throughout, Strasser makes an admirable attempt to refrain from judgment. To a degree, she fails in the attempt, and in my estimation, the book is infinitely better for that failure. Having reached her conclusions with such caution and care, she speaks her truth with clarity and undeniable power. She observes, for example, that an act becoming familiar and expected does not in any way mean that it is not wrong. In short, for a few, fleeting moments, some would say she preaches. I would say if that be true, then sign me up for a spot in the front pew. Would that my life were to be judged by one so even-handed, humble, and thoughtful.
My only other criticism is that I would have preferred that Strasser shared her experiences upon visiting Hiroshima before the penultimate chapter, and her experiences in Nagasaki before the very last pages. Mind you, there are many sound narrative and thematic reasons for sequencing the book as she did, for keeping the story rooted in Oak Ridge until the end. However, I could not escape a deep feeling of unease when the book moved past the end of World War II and right into the vast expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal thereafter without, as it were, setting foot in the shoes of those who lived the other side of the story. I wanted to hear the tales of those whose families vanished from Earth in an instant right after Strasser recounts the moment of the first atomic bomb hitting its target. I wanted the secret laid bare immediately, wanted that moral agony to haunt every page that followed. Again, though, a strong case can be made on both sides of Strasser's authorial choice.
I will now simply conclude where I started, stripped down and with greater urgency:
Read this book. It is impossible that you will not come out better for having done so.
Having covered that base, let me not bury the lede any further: This is an extraordinary book, in its writing, in its truthfulness, in its accuracy, and in its undeniable importance. I enthusiastically recommend it for all readers from young adult up without hesitation. Everyone needs to know the truth Strasser commits to telling with such integrity. As Strasser explains with an exceptional balance of passion and restraint, secrets erode the soul, both the individual and the collective soul. Healing is not possible until the veil of secrecy is lifted.
I was in elementary school when I first learned of the Hiroshima bombing; exactly what my age was I can't be certain, but it is safe to say it was represented by a single digit. The discovery led to the mild trauma of realizing for the first time that my parents may not be a completely reliable source of information. For when I shared my horror at the reality of my country's introduction of nuclear weapons to the realm of earthly war, my mother quickly toed the national line, citing all the American and Japanese lives purportedly saved by bringing the Pacific theater of World War II to a swift end. Interestingly, she set that number at a rather preposterous 7 million, an order of magnitude greater than the half-million to 1 million range generally presented by A-bomb apologists ever since the Truman administration. Whether that beefing up of the number was a simple error of memory on my mother's part, or a deliberate choice in the face of her young son's habit of intense moralizing, I will never know. But I do know that the ethics of nuclear weaponry (if that phrase is anything other than a hopeless oxymoron) have been a personal obsession of mine ever since. Hence, as soon as I learned of the publication of this book by a writer whose previously published essays always impressed me greatly, it leapt to the top of my "must read" list.
In Half-Life of a Secret, Strasser in fact investigates an intricate web of dozens, if not hundreds of secrets—national, environmental, and familial. The origins of those secrets vary, from the universal instincts to defend the actions of those we love and protect those we love from harsh truths, to overzealous patriotism and deliberate government deception. In brief, in her youth, Strasser fell in love with her family's lake house not far from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a town created by the federal government as part of the Manhattan Project. A town that came into existence for one purpose: to facilitate the development of the most devastating weaponry ever created. As she grew, she would gradually discover the connection between her family and the horrific bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that she learned about in school: her grandfather, a chemist, came to Oak Ridge as a participant in the Manhattan Project mission. Among other responsibilities, he worked on producing the enriched uranium that fueled the first fission bombs, including those that obliterated much of two Japanese cities. He stayed on at Oak Ridge throughout his working life, ultimately playing a role in the creation of hydrogen (fusion) bombs hundreds of times more powerful than the bombs that changed global war forever.
Officially, no one at Oak Ridge was to know what exactly their work was aimed at creating, other than vague notions of patriotism and somehow helping to secure victory in the war. Certainly, many workers genuinely had no idea, and would not know the purpose of their work until after the grotesquely named "Little Boy" detonated in the Hiroshima sky. Realistically, however, the scientists working at Oak Ridge, similar synthetic towns, and other top-secret facilities around the U.S. had more of a sense of what it was all about, simply because they knew the materials they were working with and what they were tasked with doing with them. But all in Oak Ridge lived by a strict code of silence, and any who grew cavalier with that code found themselves tracked by government agents and interrogated.
That tale alone would easily fill a 300-page book, but Strasser's quest for truth is relentless enough to plunge her ever deeper into the entangled threads of buried (a word that often applies literally) truths. Learning about her grandfather's role in the nuclearization of weaponry comes more or less concurrently with learning of his struggles with alcoholism, depression, and bipolar disorder (then called mania or manic depression), struggles shared to varying degrees by many other members of her family. Researching those issues leads her to investigate the multiple forms of environmental degradation surrounding Oak Ridge as a result of the furious drive to create more and more world-threatening weapons, more and more quickly. And so the web extends, farther and farther, literally (as Strasser carefully explains with meticulously gathered data) to touch every living thing on Earth.
To take on the exploration of such broad swaths of that web in such a compact book is an incredibly ambitious undertaking, and I marvel at the degree to which Strasser succeeds in assembling the puzzle pieces. Or more accurately, succeeds in laying out the puzzle pieces thoughtfully enough to allow the reader to embark on assembling them meaningfully. I will admit, however, that this success occurs somewhat unevenly over the course of the book. The extended passages where Strasser narrates her investigative process in detail at times detract a bit from the book's forward momentum. To a degree, that bogging down is altogether appropriate, as it perfectly demonstrates how difficult it is to draw nearer to truth when entire structures, be they government devices or family habits, have come into existence to steer one away from the target. Nevertheless, I felt that this point might have been demonstrated once or twice too often.
By contrast, when Strasser shares her findings with a more compact summary of the process that led her to them, the effect is positively spellbinding. She lays bare the realities of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, and all the casualties it has inflicted, from the uranium mines of Africa to civilian cities in Japan, from entire Pacific islands to fallout-drenched U.S. towns, with unyielding courage. I mentioned my childhood discussion with my mother early in this review primarily to show that due to my own obsession, I came into this book with far more knowledge of the history of The Bomb than most. Yet even with that background, Half-Life of a Secret immensely added to my knowledge, understanding, and moral struggles. All of which I welcome with the deepest gratitude.
Throughout, Strasser makes an admirable attempt to refrain from judgment. To a degree, she fails in the attempt, and in my estimation, the book is infinitely better for that failure. Having reached her conclusions with such caution and care, she speaks her truth with clarity and undeniable power. She observes, for example, that an act becoming familiar and expected does not in any way mean that it is not wrong. In short, for a few, fleeting moments, some would say she preaches. I would say if that be true, then sign me up for a spot in the front pew. Would that my life were to be judged by one so even-handed, humble, and thoughtful.
My only other criticism is that I would have preferred that Strasser shared her experiences upon visiting Hiroshima before the penultimate chapter, and her experiences in Nagasaki before the very last pages. Mind you, there are many sound narrative and thematic reasons for sequencing the book as she did, for keeping the story rooted in Oak Ridge until the end. However, I could not escape a deep feeling of unease when the book moved past the end of World War II and right into the vast expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal thereafter without, as it were, setting foot in the shoes of those who lived the other side of the story. I wanted to hear the tales of those whose families vanished from Earth in an instant right after Strasser recounts the moment of the first atomic bomb hitting its target. I wanted the secret laid bare immediately, wanted that moral agony to haunt every page that followed. Again, though, a strong case can be made on both sides of Strasser's authorial choice.
I will now simply conclude where I started, stripped down and with greater urgency:
Read this book. It is impossible that you will not come out better for having done so.
August 21, 2023
Book club book, meet the author event.
August 2, 2023
Formed in the big bang along with hydrogen, helium, and beryllium, lithium is one of the first four bits of our universe.
Is there irony, natural law, or some dark magic in the fact that the first elements of our universe are also the ones capable of undoing life on this earth? Does the beginning always contain the end?
I have not seen this summer's blockbuster movie Oppenheimer yet. By all accounts, it's an in-depth exploration of the scientist and the Manhattan Project. While the emphasis might be on what happened at Los Almos, the bomb could not have been built without the efforts taking place in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington.
Author Emily Strasser spent ten years researching this book. Her grandfather George was a chemist recruited by the secret facility at Oak Ridge, TN, to work on enriching the uranium that was integral to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The strength of this book is the personal narrative that drives the larger issues of mental health, environmental impacts, racial justice, and the moral question of nuclear arms.
I'm inclined to call this out as part of an emerging genre of "atonement literature." Strasser joins two other authors who wrote about their family's involvement in horrific events: Karen Branan's The Family Tree and Silvia Foti's The Nazi's Granddaughter. In all three cases, these women wrote about a grandfather's involvement in unconscionable acts: the creation of the atomic bomb, a lynching, and the killing of Jews in Lithuania.
The book does a deep dive into the impacts on the environment that linger still and the extent of which is unknown. It also explores the impact this work had on the physical and mental health of the people who worked at Oak Ridge. Emily Strasser takes us along with her on this journey of discovery and the book is all the better for having made that choice.
I highly recommend this book. It will linger in my mind for a very long time.
Is there irony, natural law, or some dark magic in the fact that the first elements of our universe are also the ones capable of undoing life on this earth? Does the beginning always contain the end?
I have not seen this summer's blockbuster movie Oppenheimer yet. By all accounts, it's an in-depth exploration of the scientist and the Manhattan Project. While the emphasis might be on what happened at Los Almos, the bomb could not have been built without the efforts taking place in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington.
Author Emily Strasser spent ten years researching this book. Her grandfather George was a chemist recruited by the secret facility at Oak Ridge, TN, to work on enriching the uranium that was integral to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The strength of this book is the personal narrative that drives the larger issues of mental health, environmental impacts, racial justice, and the moral question of nuclear arms.
I'm inclined to call this out as part of an emerging genre of "atonement literature." Strasser joins two other authors who wrote about their family's involvement in horrific events: Karen Branan's The Family Tree and Silvia Foti's The Nazi's Granddaughter. In all three cases, these women wrote about a grandfather's involvement in unconscionable acts: the creation of the atomic bomb, a lynching, and the killing of Jews in Lithuania.
The book does a deep dive into the impacts on the environment that linger still and the extent of which is unknown. It also explores the impact this work had on the physical and mental health of the people who worked at Oak Ridge. Emily Strasser takes us along with her on this journey of discovery and the book is all the better for having made that choice.
I highly recommend this book. It will linger in my mind for a very long time.
May 10, 2023
In Half-Life of a Secret, Emily Strasser shares a journey of personal discovery that has nothing short of global implications. Strasser remembers as a child seeing a photograph of her grandfather, who worked as a scientist for the nuclear program at Oak Ridge in Tennessee, standing in front of an atomic explosion. Or so she thought. The photograph had long disappeared and remarkably few in the family remembered it at all. Chasing down this memory in an effort to understand the grandfather she never knew and his role in the creation of the nuclear bomb, Strasser comes to understand the fallout of a culture of secrecy whose toxicity can linger for generations. She writes, “And yet, fallout teaches us that nothing will be contained, that we cannot pluck at one thread without shivering the whole web.” Dense with information and insight, this beautifully written memoir is both intimate and universal as it confronts a family’s complicity with secrecy as well as our nation’s responsibility for creating and using a weapon of war powerful enough to obliterate humanity from the planet.
November 5, 2024
Emily Strasser’s “Half Life of a Secret” is an absolute gift to a world in crisis. She generously shares anecdotes, previously kept secret, about her grandfather’s involvement in the production of the atomic bomb and explores the irrevocable impact it’s had in the world, including more intimately, on the mental health of her family and community. Her writing seamlessly weaves narrative and science, provoking difficult questions about what our responsibility is in taking accountability for our family’s, and country’s, actions, and what we can do moving forward. A scope this large would seem nearly impossible to cover, but Strasser’s does it with incredible awareness and fervor. Her commitment and journey of unearthing this dark past is a powerful feat that reminds us to look at the things that make us uncomfortable, even if we’re afraid of what we might discover along the way.
September 29, 2025
It is impressive the way Emily Strasser tackled this project. She was determined to know her grandfather's history and as she dug deeper she learned about him but so much more about building the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The sacrifice that so many families made along with the unseen damage the remnants leave for future generations and reckoning with the guilt of family history were the themes that carried through for me. I had seen Openheimer the movie so I knew little cities came up but I didn't realize there were several and that they were so big.
I found the book a slow read. I would put the book down for a week at a time and yesterday decided I needed to just finish, only to find the last 30 pages are sources and notes.
I found the book a slow read. I would put the book down for a week at a time and yesterday decided I needed to just finish, only to find the last 30 pages are sources and notes.
December 23, 2024
This nonfiction book was written by an author who decided to research her grandfather's role in developing the atom bomb. She remembers a picture of the practice explosion in the desert at their summer home, and delves into why that picture was there. She finds out that her family has a secret past that many don't discuss. This book really makes you think about how countries disguise their atrocities against others and how deep secrets need to be buried by so many! She also makes a trip to Hiroshima... it's not only the USA that tends to paint a rosier picture rather than tell the truth. Very good!
April 11, 2023
I should disclose this in about my hometown, and I know this family. George’s funeral was the first funeral I remember attending. With that said, this review is short, because so many of my thoughts are personal and not sure how the apply to everyone.
This book captivated me from page 1. It was incredibly well researched, and I learned so much about the place I grew up and the things that happened on the other side of that ridge. I find myself thinking about it days later. There is so much people know and think they know about the Manhattan Project, but this really brings to life how life went on (or didn’t) afterward for those involved.
This book captivated me from page 1. It was incredibly well researched, and I learned so much about the place I grew up and the things that happened on the other side of that ridge. I find myself thinking about it days later. There is so much people know and think they know about the Manhattan Project, but this really brings to life how life went on (or didn’t) afterward for those involved.
October 4, 2025
I found this book completely by chance, and I am so glad that I did. It was truly a fantastic blend of a family's secrets and their entangled history with the Manhattan Project and Oak Ridge. I enjoyed the blend of anecdotes and historical facts. Strasser's writing style pulled me right into the thick of things and held me rapt as she unraveled the truth of decades gone by.
Phenomenal reading experience for sure!
Phenomenal reading experience for sure!
February 28, 2023
I can't wait to read this book! I didn't know there were multiple secret cities that were part of the Manhattan project. I've followed Strasser's work for years and I'm delighted to see her first novel out! :D
March 11, 2023
This beautifully written book is a moving exploration of guilt and responsibility, family secrets and government obfuscation. I'm in awe of how Strasser has woven so many themes together to create a compelling read. A real tour de force.
September 24, 2025
This book is so much. I didn’t expect there to be so many layers and angles, and that it managed to combine them all in a way that flowed and wasn’t forced is such a feat. A beautifully mapped rabbit hole that gave me entirely new insight into this part of history and it’s legacy.
December 6, 2023
Overall good!
February 12, 2024
3.5 stars
January 4, 2025
Read a good chunk of this book for an assignment and it was written in a way that was quite engaging. I honestly enjoyed it, I just need to re read it chronologically.
October 22, 2025
so impressive on a technical level
February 5, 2024
In March, my store (Bear Den Books) had our first author event where a publisher reached out to see if we’d host their author. That author was Emily Strasser and her book was Half-Life of a Secret. In the book she delved into the past of her grandfather who worked at Y-12 in Oak Ridge during The Manhattan Project to help produce the first atomic bomb.
I didn’t know what to expect. Emily’s publisher, University of Kentucky Press, sent me an advance copy, so I read it! I thought it was a finely written and well researched book. It was a personal journey that took her from Oak Ridge to Hiroshima.
She traveled in from Minnesota, and we held the author event — it was fascinating to hear the story of her grandfather and what became of him as he went further into the new profession created in the wake of the atomic bomb. How do you grapple with a legacy of nuclear weapons that killed so many in Japan and is the ominous shadow that could end all life on the planet at any time? Read the book to find out!
I didn’t know what to expect. Emily’s publisher, University of Kentucky Press, sent me an advance copy, so I read it! I thought it was a finely written and well researched book. It was a personal journey that took her from Oak Ridge to Hiroshima.
She traveled in from Minnesota, and we held the author event — it was fascinating to hear the story of her grandfather and what became of him as he went further into the new profession created in the wake of the atomic bomb. How do you grapple with a legacy of nuclear weapons that killed so many in Japan and is the ominous shadow that could end all life on the planet at any time? Read the book to find out!
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews