109 East Palace - Jennet Conant

In the days that followed, she learned that the man she had met, who went by the name of Mr. Bradley, was actually J. Robert Oppenheimer, a famous American physicist from the University of California at Berkeley and the leader of a secret wartime project. Bradley was the name he would use in and around town, and the way she was to address him in public. She would learn never to mention his real name and, for that matter, never to mention him at all. Not to anyone. She was told never, under any circumstances, to use the word "physicist." "I was told never to ask questions, never to have a name repeated," she wrote, recalling her initiation into the most momentous scientific project of the twentieth century.

This book tells the story of Los Alamos largely based on the diaries of the Robert Oppenheimer's assistant.  It presents the human side of the development of the secret city and the creation of the atomic bomb.  While focused on Oppenheimer, the reader is also is given an insight into the people that made up this city.  It was the largest gathering of scientists ever put to one task in a single place.

The author gives the reader a good feel for the Santa Fe area in the early forties.  We see the difficulties of rapidly building an entire city and scientfic labs in a remote desert location.  The challenges of keeping the whole operation top secret make for an intriguing read.  For me, the last third of the book dragged a little as the focus moved from Los Alamos to the challenges Oppenheimer and others faced in the subsequent McCarthy era.  I also would have liked more details on the scientific challenges and less on details like setting up kitchens in the homes. 

I didn't like this book nearly as much as the author's previous novel, Tuxedo Park, which I highly recommend.  Still, it is an enjoyable read about a most fascinating endeavor.