Children of Los Alamos; An Oral History of the Town Where the Atomic Age Began
New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995. First paperback printing [stated]. Trade paperback. xiv, 204, [6] pages. Illustrations. Epilogue. Methodology. Appendix: Biographical Notes on Interviews. Notes and References. Bibliography. Index. Cover has some wear and soiling. Some edge soiling. RARE SIGNED COPY. Inscribed on the half-title page. Inscription reads To Nancy, Enjoy! Katrina. This work is divided into a section on Keeping the Secret and on After the War and Looking Back. The series editor notes that "Oral history may well be the twentieth century's substitute for the written memoir. In exchange for the immediacy of diaries or correspondence, the retrospective interview offers a dialogue between the participant and the informed interviewer. Having prepared sufficient preliminary research, interviewers can direct the discussion into areas long since "forgotten" or no longer considered of consequence. The quality of the interview, its candidness and depth, generally will depend as much on the interviewer as the interviewee, and the confidence and rapport between the two adds a special dimension to the spoken memoir. The author noted that "While the children of Los Alamos did not think of themselves as unique when they were children, as adults they realize that many circumstances they accepted were peculiar...They lived in a community that was not only secret but intense (and often tense), carefully selected, and diverse in geographic and cultural background." The recollections of those who were children in Los Alamos from 1943 to 1952 reveal common threads: security, multi-culturalism, and a sense of connection to the land. More