Set against a dramatic backdrop of war, spies, and nuclear bombs, An
Atomic Love Story unveils a vivid new view of a tumultuous era and one of
its most important figures. In the early decades of the 20th century, three
highly ambitious women found their way to the West Coast, where each was
destined to collide with the young Oppenheimer, the enigmatic physicist whose
work in creating the atomic bomb would forever impact modern history. His first
and most intense love was for Jean Tatlock, though he married the tempestuous
Kitty Harrison—both were members of the Communist Party—and was rumored to have
had a scandalous affair with the brilliant Ruth Sherman Tolman, ten years his
senior and the wife of another celebrated physicist. Although each were
connected through their relationship to Oppenheimer, their experiences reflect
important changes in the lives of American women in the 20th century: the
conflict between career and marriage; the need for a woman to define herself
independently; experimentation with sexuality; and the growth of career
opportunities.
Beautifully written and superbly researched through a rich
collection of firsthand accounts, this intimate portrait shares the tragedies,
betrayals, and romances of an alluring man and three bold women, revealing how
they pushed to the very forefront of social and cultural changes in a fascinating,
volatile era.
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Book Excerpt
June 14, 1943
The light was fading by the time Robert Oppenheimer left Le Conte
Hall.
He walked across campus at his usual fast clip, heading for the
streetcar that would take him into San Francisco. He would have allowed his
mind to skim over the consequences of what he was about to do. Not that he was
weighing them; he had already made the decision to see Jean Tatlock. It would
be more of an exercise to keep his mind occupied, to block the uncertainty of
how he would find her.
Radiant or remorseful. Perfect or flawed.
There would be hell to pay, that he knew. He would have stopped to
light a cigarette, maybe taking the opportunity to glance around for the Army
security agent he knew would be there. He was too important to the war effort
to be allowed to go loose in the world. His slender, six-foot frame and his
signature porkpie hat made him an easy target to tail. The security agents
would inform Pash, and Pash would be delighted to inform General Groves, and
the general would be livid.
Oppenheimer was the new scientific director of the Los Alamos
section of the Manhattan Project, hidden on a mesa high in the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains of New Mexico. It was possible that seeing Jean could cause him to be
removed from the project altogether. The idea was so disturbing that it would
have had to be put out of his mind, along with the wife and two-year-old son he
left behind in Los Alamos.
After one last deep drag of his cigarette, he would have flicked
it away, then swung onto the Key System train that would carry him over the
Oakland Bay Bridge and into the city. He was thirty-nine that June. Jean was
twenty-nine. They had known each other, loved each other, for seven years. He
would always want her; twice he had come close to marrying her.
Three months before, when he had been about to leave Berkeley for
Los Alamos, Jean had asked to see him, but he had not gone to her then. Too
much was happening, too fast. He wasn’t allowed to tell her why he was leaving
or where he was going, could not confide what he and a remarkable band of
scientists were attempting to create. Probably he was glad for that; Jean would
not have approved.
She was one of the most principled people he had ever known; she
believed above all else in the sanctity of life. She was a physician now, a
resident in psychiatry at Mount Zion Hospital, working with troubled children.
She did not know that ending World War II might depend on his group’s ability
to develop a weapon of mass destruction so horrific it would defeat America’s
enemies, unless the Germans got it first. That grim possibility played on his
mind. The Germans were intent on conquering all of Europe, the world. Would
Jean, with her kind and open heart, be able to grasp the enormity of such a
catastrophe?
Oppenheimer arrived at 9:45 PWT, the
FBI report reads. He rushed to meet a young lady, whom he kissed and
they walked away arm in arm. They entered a 1935 green Plymouth coupe
and the young lady drove. The car is registered to Jean Tatlock. She is
five foot seven, 128 [pounds], long dark hair, slim, attractive.
She drove east along the Embarcadero—the scene of much of the
labor unrest she had reported in the Western Worker—then turned west on
Broadway. She had decided where they would eat; not one of the posh restaurants
he would have chosen, but a shabby place not far from her apartment on
Telegraph Hill, good for the spicy food he favored and some proletarian
privacy. An agent waited outside.
He would report: Drove to Xochiniloc Cafe, 787 Broadway, at 10
p.m. Cheap type bar, cafe, and dance hall operated by Mexicans. Had few
drinks, something to eat, went to 1405 Montgomery where she lives on top
floor...Appears to be very affectionate and intimate...At 11:30 lights went
out.
Within two weeks, Lieutenant Colonel Boris Pash, chief of
counterintelligence for the Ninth Army Corps in San Francisco, would send a
memo to the Pentagon recommending that Dr. Oppenheimer be denied a security
clearance and be fired as scientific director of the Manhattan Project, citing
among other things this overnight tryst with Jean Tatlock, identified as his
mistress and a known Communist.
Shirley Streshinsky is a critically acclaimed author of
three works of nonfiction and four historical novels. As a journalist and
travel essayist, she has written extensively for a wide range of national
magazines such as Glamour, Preservation, American Heritage, The American
Scholar, and Condé Nast Traveler. She is the recipient of the
Society of Magazine Writers' Award for Excellence and the National Council for
the Advancement of Education Writing award, and was cited by The Educational
Press Association of America for "superlative achievement in
features." Her travel essays have been a feature on National Public Radio.
She was married to the late photojournalist Ted Streshinsky and lives in
Kensington (Berkeley), California.
Patricia Klaus is an independent scholar who attended the University of California at Santa Barbara, and then Stanford University where she earned a Ph.D. in Modern British History. She taught twentieth-century British history at Yale University, was a visiting lecturer at the University of Virginia and Stanford, and has written a number of historical articles. Her particular interests are women in nineteenth and twentieth century England as well as the study of war and literature, which made working on a book about the remarkable women of the Atomic Age especially appealing.
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