Half-Life of a Secret: Reckoning with a Hidden History

During World War II, the US government built a secret city named Oak Ridge in Tennessee to develop the first atomic bomb. Emily Strasser's grandfather, a chemist, worked in Oak Ridge and suffered from mental illness due to his work. Strasser explores the toxic legacy of nuclear weapons production and the government's disregard for environmental and public health.

Format: Hardback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 04 April 2023
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky

In 1942, the United States government initiated the construction of a sixty-thousand-acre planned community known as Oak Ridge in a remote area west of Knoxville, Tennessee. Unmarked on regional maps, Oak Ridge attracted over seventy thousand individuals, driven by the allure of high-paying wartime jobs. Among them was Emily Strasser's grandfather, George, a chemist. All employees, ranging from scientists to secretaries, military personnel to construction workers, were subject to stringent security measures. They were provided with only the minimum information necessary to perform their duties. 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 explicit purpose of developing the first atomic bomb, which devastated Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

In Half-Life of a Secret: Reckoning with a Hidden History, Emily Strasser unveils the profound and enduring toxic legacy that has forever polluted her family, a community, the nation, and the world. Through a meticulous exploration of archives and family memories, coupled with travels to the arid deserts of Nevada and the living rooms of Hiroshima, she grapples with the far-reaching consequences of her grandfather's work. Strasser discovers that during the three decades he dedicated to building nuclear weapons, George suffered from a debilitating mental illness. Upon returning to Oak Ridge, Strasser confronts the widespread contamination resulting from nuclear weapons production, as well as the government's disregard for its environmental and public health impacts. With insightful clarity, she reveals the interconnectedness between the culture of secrecy within her family and the institutionalized secrecy within the nuclear industry, which persists to this day.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780813197197