REGISTRATION REQUIRED – All book discussion sign-ups are announced at the beginning of every semester on the Honors listserv

• Book: HALF-LIFE OF A SECRET: RECKONING WITH A HIDDEN HISTORY by Emily Strasser
• Discussion Leader: Dr. Naomi Egel, Assistant Professor of International Affairs and Fellow, Center for International Trade and Security
• Date: Wednesday, October 15, 6-8pm
• Location: Moore hall 116
• Description: In 1942, the US government began construction on a sixty-thousand-acre planned community named Oak Ridge in a rural area west of Knoxville, Tennessee. Unmarked on regional maps, Oak Ridge attracted more than seventy thousand people eager for high-paying wartime jobs. Among them was author Emily Strasser’s grandfather George, a chemist. All employees―from scientists to secretaries, from military personnel to construction workers―were restricted by the tightest security. They were provided only the minimum information necessary to perform their jobs. 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 express 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 exposes the toxic legacy – political, environmental, and personal – that forever polluted her family, a community, the nation, and the world. Sifting through archives and family memories, and traveling to the deserts of Nevada and the living rooms of Hiroshima, she grapples with the far-reaching ramifications of her grandfather’s work.

Contact: Kora Burton, [email protected].