Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project

'The atomic bomb. As ominous as the atomic legacy itself, these words conjure a stark image of a mushroom cloud, devastation, and death by radiation. Code-named the Manhattan Project, the detailed plans for developing an atomic bomb were impelled by urgency and shrouded in secrecy. The Manhattan Engineer District, the coded designation for the numerous sites where the volatile bomb components were developed, included not only university laboratories, but also geographically remote locations where civilians and scientists clashed with the requirements of military culture. "Atomic Spaces" tells the story of the project's three key sites: Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Hanford, Washington; and Los Alamos, New Mexico. Drawing from tens of thousands of never-before-studied documents, from house plans to medical records, Peter Bacon Hales trains a cultural historian's eye on the worlds within the fences'.'The result is a bold, graphic reinterpretation of these sites and the larger issues they represented: the clashes between ideals of obedience and freedom, efficiency and democracy. Out of these, Hales proposes, came a new form of American culture. Creating an atomic bomb was an utterly new, dangerous, and urgent mission, one that seemed to justify ignoring known environmental hazards, downplaying dangers, and covering up accidents; yet as part of our atomic legacy, some of these wartime imperatives endure in peacetime practices in the military and defense industries. Peter Bacon Hales, a professor of art history and director of the American Studies Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is the author of "Silver Cities: The Photography of American Urbanization, 1839-1915 and William Henry Jackson and the Transformation of the American Landscape"'.