New Year -- New Resources

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Remembering The Blitz in fiction

As you may remember, last Spring I had highly recommended Connie Willis' BLACKOUT, about 21st-century time travelers stuck in London during The Blitz; the sequel, ALL CLEAR, is due out from Bantam in October.

Also just published and highly praised is Jessica Francis Kane's novel,  THE REPORT (Graywolf), which alternates between interviews for a 1972 documentary and flashbacks about the worst civilian disaster in war-time, when a London Tube air raid shelter panic led to 170+ deaths in seconds, just like the crowds crushed in at the German music festival this year.

If you are interested in more about the "home front" aspect of WW II, in England and America, you will want to read 109 EAST PALACE:  Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos by Jennet Conant, The author, whose grandfather ran the Manhattan Project in Chicago, describes the tremendous effort required to create from scratch the town that housed the scientists who invented the atomic bomb, largely through the memoirs of a Santa Fe widow, Dorothy McKibbin, who single-handedly made the place liveable for researchers and their wives and children alike. 

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