Woo hoo! Welcome to the second week of Nonfiction November. Our host this week is Leslie (Regular Rumination) and our topic is book pairings:
Book Pairing: This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. It can be an “if you loved this book, read this!” or just two titles that you think would go well together. Maybe it’s a historical novel and you’d like to get the real history by reading a nonfiction version of the story.
As I mentioned in my Currently post on Sunday, my friend Chrissy Kolaya’s first novel, Charmed Particles, comes out this week from Dzanc Books. The book is set in a small town in rural Illinois that is home to both a living history museum and laboratory studying high-energy particle physics. When the town becomes a finalist to host a new superconducting supercollider, tensions between long-time community members and scientists at the lab threaten to split the town.
The conflict between science and community isn’t a new one. Communities often feel threatened when new facilities or experiments are set to happen in their backyard, and scientists are often terrible at explaining the benefits of their experimental research. With that in mind, here are three great true stories about the conflict between science and community.
Full Body Burden by Kristen Iversen
Kristen Iversen grew up in a small subdivision outside of Denver, downwind from a nuclear weapons facility that produced plutonium bomb components, Rocky Flats. No one in the community knew what happened at the factory and, frankly, no one thought about it much because they had more pressing concerns. As Iversen grew older, her perspective on the plant changed, shifting from blissful ignorance to skepticism to frustration to anger. Full Body Burden is her account of life outside Rocky Flats that shows the true cost of government neglect and corporate corruption. I highly recommend this one.
The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan
By the time World War II ended, more than 75,000 people lived and worked at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a hastily built town with the sole purpose of supporting the country’s atomic bomb program. Like many World War II industries, the factory and supporting businesses were staffed primarily by women. In The Girls of Atomic City, Kiernan gives a full account of what a strange experience it was to live in this particular place. She is particularly great at bringing out the personalities of the nine women she focused on for the story, showing how they joined “The Project” and what their involvement with such a secretive program actually meant.
Leaving Orbit by Margaret Lazarus Dean
Margaret Lazarus Dean is a bit of a space fangirl, someone fascinated by space flight and what it takes to make each launch happen. Leaving Orbit is a chronicle of the last three flight in the American shuttle program and a history of American spaceflight. The conflict in Leaving Orbit isn’t quite as obvious as it is in the other two books I’ve mentioned. Instead, the book is more about how to justify the enormous costs of space exploration – discovery for the sake of discovery – in a time when there is pressure to cut costs and focus on problems closer to home. The book is a really great elegy and celebration of the American shuttle program that asks good questions about where we go next.
Programming Notes
- This week’s host is Leslie (Regular Rumination), so make sure to visit her blog to link up your post for the week.
- If you’re talking about Nonfiction November on Twitter, please use the hashtag #nonficnov for your posts so we can find them. The hashtag seems a little crowded this year, but we’ll just make it work.
- Our topic next week is Nontraditional Nonfiction hosted by Rebecca (I’m Lost in Books).
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This is a great reminder that I have to read The Girls of Atomic City! I bought it so long ago and it sounds really great.
Full Body Burden sounds so interesting! And – The Girls of Atomic City sounds like the nonfiction version of an historical fiction novel I’ve had on my TBR forever, The Wives of Los Alamos.
Yes, they do sound really similar. I loved that The Girls of Atomic City focused a lot on women who actually worked at the facility, so maybe it’d be a good companion — women’s roles in different spheres of the projects.
I loved The Girls of Atomic City so will have to check out Full Body Burden.
I’m echoing nearly everyone else! I so need to read Girls of Atomic City!
Interesting topic — I want to branch out more in my nonfiction reading and this would be a great way to work in more science.
Definitely! All three of these have some science, but they’re more focused on history and social issues, so they’re a nice ease in to science writing.
Excellent choices. The Girls of Atomic City especially interests me.
Ooh, I love the topic you selected! The Girls of Atomic City reminds me a lot of the novel The Wives of Los Alamos—have you read it? I’d be interested to see how the real and fictional accounts of the Manhattan Project differ!
I haven’t, but sounds really similar!
What a great topic…I am so enjoying the variety of these posts! And all of the books look so good!
Full Body Burden sounds fascinating. The Girls of Atomic City has been on my want list for a while now.
Your friend’s novel sounds eerily similar to the particle physics laboratory that resides one town over from where I grew up. In fact, there was a big to-do many years ago as they competed with CERN for one of the huge projects (it went to CERN). This book wouldn’t happen to take place in Batavia, IL, would it?
The town is fictionalized, and now I can’t remember the town it’s actually based on… it’s a suburb of Chicago, so maybe?
WHY ARE THERE SO MANY GOOD BOOKS?!! 😉 Thanks so much for these recommendations, Kim; I’d love to read The Girls of Atomic City!!
That is a book nerd’s biggest problem, isn’t it? So many books, so little time.
I read Full Body Burden on your recommendation and it was absolutely fantastic. Sounds like I must get to the rest of the books in this post! I’m so intrigued by Charmed Particles. My best friend worked at FermiLab and CERN and I got to visit both when she worked there… sounds like Charmed Particles might be a little bit inspired by FermiLab?
Yes, it is! I think you’d like the book a lot — definitely pick it up.
I’m super interested in The Girls of Atomic City, particularly because my dad and several folks in my brother-in-law’s family work in Oak Ridge. They just call it “The Plant,” but I feel like there’s still an air of secrecy about the place, as well as the work that goes on there. Perhaps that will always be the case, simply because it’s a nuclear facility (even though today it’s more about nuclear power than nuclear bombs), but I’ve always been curious and have never really gotten any juicy details when I’ve asked about it.
I’m also going to add Charmed Particles to my list, because it does sound like it was inspired by FermiLab — a strange place I visited on a few field trips as a kid growing up in a suburb of Chicago.
Hooray for books that make science interesting!
Yes, parts are definitely based on the history of the FermiLab — I think you’d really enjoy the book if just for that aspect of it.
I’ve seen The Girls of Atomic City on a bunch of these lists. I guess I should read it asap!
I keep seeing Girls of Atomic City and that means I should admit to my TBR list. Great pairings. I’m looking forward to reading what everyone comes up for week three!
I’m interested in the second book, but all of them sound great.
Thanks for the recommendations!
You made a good point about scientists being bad at explaining things to the non-scientific people 😉 And there’s also the fact that some people seem to be against improvements, just “because”.
Yes, also that. Misunderstanding and fears of change often go hand in hand in these situations.
I loved Atomic City for exactly the reason you mentioned- she brings the women’s lives to life. I also had no idea that segregation was still enforced at the time so in that way it went beyond the solidarity of the war effort to show that the country still could not work together.