The U.S. WIN Professional Development (PD) Committee is excited to announce the creation of a book club open to the entire organization. The inaugural book for the club will be: The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan.

The PD committee will be discussing this during their monthly phone call in December. After this discussion, we will post a subsequent WINning Edge article. This way comments on the post can be screened and captured as we do not have access to a separate message board platform. If you have suggestions for an interesting book in the spirit of U.S. WIN and/or Professional Development, please contact [email protected]. New books will be announced quarterly via the WINning Edge as well, so keep an eye out!

Synopsis: At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents, and consumed more electricity than New York City, yet it was shrouded in such secrecy that it did not appear on any map. Thousands of civilians, many of them young women from small towns across the U.S., were recruited to this secret city, enticed by the promise of solid wages and war-ending work. What were they actually doing there? Very few knew. The purpose of this mysterious government project was kept a secret from the outside world and from the majority of the residents themselves. Some wondered why, despite the constant work and round-the-clock activity in this makeshift town, did no tangible product of any kind ever seem to leave its guarded gates? The women who kept this town running would find out at the end of the war, when Oak Ridge’s secret was revealed and changed the world forever. Drawing from the voices and experiences of the women who lived and worked in Oak Ridge, The Girls of Atomic City rescues a remarkable, forgotten chapter of World War II from obscurity.