Just off I-40, west of Knoxville, Tennessee, drivers note the exit signs for Oak Ridge and, probably, think very little of it. But this one-time secret city, a Manhattan Project site, employed thousands of small-town southern women during World War II to work on the atomic bomb. A new book, The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II, shares interviews and personal stories of some of these women in a fascinating tale of secrecy, first-time independence, even romance. Author Denise Kiernan joins Mark Perzel to talk about these extraordinary women from an extraordinary time.
