This Atom Bomb in Me traces what it felt like to grow up suffused with
American nuclear culture in and around the atomic city of Oak Ridge,
Tennessee. As a secret city during the Manhattan Project, Oak Ridge
enriched the uranium that powered Little Boy, the bomb that destroyed
Hiroshima. The city was a major nuclear production site throughout the
Cold War, adding something to each and every bomb in the United States
arsenal. Even today, Oak Ridge contains the world's largest supply of
fissionable uranium.
The granddaughter of an atomic courier, Lindsey A. Freeman turns a
critical yet nostalgic eye to the place where her family was sent as
part of a covert government plan. Theirs was a city devoted to nuclear
science within a larger America obsessed with its nuclear prowess.
Through memories, mysterious photographs, and uncanny childhood toys,
she shows how Reagan-era politics and nuclear culture irradiated the
late twentieth century. Alternately tender and alarming, her book takes
a Geiger counter to recent history, reading the half-life of the atomic
past as it resonates in our tense nuclear present.