Inventing Los Alamos; The Growth of an Atomic Community
Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. x, [2], 288, [4] pages. List of Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Contents include Introduction; Rendezvous at Site Y: The Instant City; Fishing in the Desert with Fat Man: Civic Tension, Atomic Explosion; Postwar Los Alamos: Exodus, New Growth, and Invisible Danger; Los Alamos Transformed: Federal Largesse and Red Challenge; A Cold War Community Up in Arms: Competition and Conformity; Toward Normalizing Los Alamos: Cracking the Gates; and Atomic City on a Hill: Legacy and Continuing Research. A narrative history focuses on how the inhabitants of Los Alamos, New Mexico, confronted both the rush to create an atomic bomb and the intensity of the subsequent Cold War era, in a study of a community's first fifteen years as home to a national laboratory. It explores the momentous events that created the town, the lives of the families who lived there, and the impact this small community had on the creation and development of the Atomic Age. Jon Hunner was a Professor of History at New Mexico State University. Dr. Hunner taught at New Mexico State University from 1995 to 2018. He specialized in 20th century U.S. history and Public History. He received his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico, and is the author of Inventing Los Alamos, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Cold War and the Atomic West, and other works. He previously served as director of the New Mexico History Museum. More