The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan

World War II was a time when secrecy was often a necessary part of security. The secrecy surrounding the development to of the atomic bomb was particularly thick. Since that veil was lifted, Las Alamos, Nevada, has become strongly associated with the bomb, as it should be. However, there were other locations critical to the project. Denis Kiernan discusses one of them, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in her book The Girls of Atomic City.

The Clinton Engineer Works was part of the Manhattan Project. Its purpose was the enrichment of uranium to supply the research, development and construction of an atomic weapon. When it was built, the Army took over thousands of acres of farmland in Tennessee, displacing the residents. Oak Ridge did not exist before the project.

As the title suggests, Kiernan focuses on the role of women at the Clinton Engineer Works, as the area was known when it was a military reservation. The book draws on her interviews with women who worked at the site; the experiences of nine particular women serve as guideposts for the story. These women served in a variety of roles: statistician, chemist, inspector, equipment operator, nurse, secretary, and janitor. Some became wives and mothers as well during the war years. It was an interesting time when there was space for women in science, technology and manufacturing, but not a lot.

Kiernan reaches outside of Oak Ridge to mention other notable women who played a part. German physicist Lise Meitner coined the term nuclear fission; she had Jewish ancestors and fled to Sweden as the Nazis came to power in her homeland. Earlier, Ida Noddack was the first to suggest that the atomic nucleus could split, an idea that was initially rejected by many scientists studying radioactivity and the inner workings of the atom.

The growth of families in a place designed solely for one purpose suggested a result that had not been considered when the Army started to build the Clinton Engineer Works. Oak Ridge was becoming a community and it eventually became an incorporated city (in 1958 by a vote of the residents after federal and state laws opened the opportunity). Though the population dropped dramatically from its war-time peak, Oak Ridge remained a center for research in nuclear energy and the peace-time use of radioactive materials as it transitioned to civilian control. Today the Oak Ridge National Laboratory continues research in energy and computing. The city of Oak Ridge continues as well, still connected to its past as a unique factory town, but in many way a city like any other.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes

IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Planck by Brandon R. Brown

The Powerhouse by Steve Levine

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman

The Supergirls by Mike Madrid

Kiernan, Denise. The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II. 2013. New York Touchstone: 2014.

The Supergirls by Mike Madrid

Superhero comics have been around for more than 70 year. Women adventurers started to don costumes soon after Superman showed how fun—and lucrative—it could be. Mike Madrid describes the history of these heroines in The Supergirls.

Comic book publishers have often followed fads and borrowed ideas and genres from other media. Even though superheroes originated in comic books, they still often reflected the prevailing views of their times and sometimes lagged other media in responding to changes in culture. This is particularly true for the depiction of superheroines.

Madrid shows how the ups and downs of women in American culture were reflected in the lives of their colorful, pulp counterparts. This follows a roughly decade by decade structure beginning in the 1940s when Wonder Woman appeared to fight oppressors and teach the world about the superiority of love, and the 2000s when relatively mature and complex female characters started to become more common.

It’s interesting to me that the World War II-era superheroines were tougher, more independent and more feminist than most the female characters in the decades that followed. Wonder Woman had an openly feminist agenda and aimed to teach girls to be women who could be strong and gracious, though the comic also reflected some the more peculiar perspectives of their creator and writer William Marston Moulton.

Until recently, women in comics had to be something. The had to be object lessons, girlfriends, hangers on, helpers, cheerleaders, career women, glamorous vixens, virgins, princesses,  husband hunters or whatever else a woman was supposed to be in that era. It took a long time for comics to come around to a woman being a person. Still super-powered and still a woman, but fundamentally a person.

As I read this book, I also thought about my profession. I’ve worked as an engineer for more than 20 years. Women are much more common in engineering than they once were, but there is still a push to attract women to the field. I think we sometimes get derailed by trying to prove that girls can like STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) as much as boy can.  Of course, they can. We should also think that the appeal of engineering may be in other thing, for both boys and girls. I was interested in technology as a kid (and enjoyed reading the adventures of Iron Man and Mister Fantastic), but I was also interested in justice, health, economic mobility, and the potential of water, power and mobility to make people’s lives better. I’m not that interested in technology for its own sake, but I’m very interested in how technology can lead to solutions that make people healthier, richer, more connected and happier. I think that is something that could be appealing to many girls, especially to girls who read comics.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in.

Comic Book Nation by Bradford W. Wright

Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes

Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones

Miss Mizzou by J. B. Winter

Reading Comics by Douglas Wolk

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Madrid, Mike. The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines. Exterminating Angels Press, 2009.

Women's History Month 2016

For Women’s History Month, I’ve listed below books by or about women (a few fictional), along with some other interesting links.

A Professor, a President, and a Meteor by Cathryn J. Prince

Ada's Algorithm by James Essinger

Double Your Brain Power by Jean Marie Stine

Esther

Fic by Anne Jamison

The Introvert's Way by Sophia Dembling

Make a Joyful Sound by Helen Elmira Waite

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

Miss Leavitt's Stars by George Johnson

Miss Mizzou by J. B. Winter

On a Grander Scale by Lisa Jardine

The Power of Nice by Linda Kaplan Thaler & Robin Koval

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

Small Move, Big Change by Caroline L. Arnold

The Solution by Lucinda Bassett

Switch on Your Brain by Caroline Leaf

Tech sector hiring more women, data shows... or is it? (@BonnieGrrl in Crave)

Waste and Want by Susan Strasser

Women's History Month Links 2013

Women’s History Month Links 2011

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

Wonder Woman is one of most popular comic book characters. Because she is about to be featured in a film that will bring Batman and Superman together in epic battle, and is expected to be featured in a film of her own, the Internet is already beginning to buzz with concern over how badly she may be portrayed and hopes that the filmmakers will get her right. She has starred in some great stories, but often the stories about her have disappointed for various reasons. The difficulty of depicting a woman superhero has its roots in sorting out the roles of women in society, something we’re still working on. It is a struggle Wonder Woman was born to fight.

Jill Lepore explores the birth of this female superhero in The Secret History of Wonder Woman. In one of her various comics origins, the demigoddess was formed from the mud of Paradise Island, but Lepore describes how she was formed in the suffrage and feminist movements of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and an unusual family with strong ties to these movements.

Wonder Woman first appeared in print in 1941. When she became the title character of her own comic, her creator came from behind his pseudonym, with some fanfare, and revealed himself as psychologist William Moulton Marston.

Marston’s lifestyle is known now, but it was a closely held secret during his lifetime. For all practical purposes, if not legally, he had two wives. Surprisingly, both women were feminists. They both loved Marston and found in this arrangement a way to live the lives they wanted. They had a pragmatic, flexible feminism that was accepting of the unconventional. I can hardly do it justice in a few words, but Lepore explores the early days of feminism that shaped the arrangement Marston had with these two women.

Marston met Elizabeth Holloway while they were undergraduates, he at Harvard and she at Mount Holyoke. They were both advocates of women’s suffrage. They married in 1915. Marston received a doctorate and Holloway a master’s degree. Holloway claimed to be deeply involved in Marston’s early research. The Marston household became full of writers and editors, and overtime attribution became a matter of convenience or marketing rather than identification of individual authorship.

Olive Byrne met Marston as an undergraduate at Tufts, where she became his research assistant. She quickly became more and moved into the Marston household. Eventually they worked out the arrangement that Holloway would work full-time (over time she had several jobs as an editor) while Byrne raised the children (each had two children with Marston). Byrne eventually felt the need to contribute the finances and in the 1930s wrote for Family Circle as Oliver Richards (Richards from the marriage and widowhood she faked to obscure the parentage of her children). Byrne, like the Marstons she joined, had ties to the feminist and birth control movements. She was the daughter of Ethel Byrne  and her aunt was the more famous Margaret Sanger.

Holloway, Byrne, and even Sanger, were to varying degrees the models for Wonder Woman. She was to be feminist propaganda, and under Marston’s pen she was. One would guess that this would have attracted criticism, but it was not the feminism of Wonder Woman that most stirred up critics.

Bondage was depicted on almost every page of Marston’s comics. In addition, Wonder Woman’s costume was skimpy. Lepore links the bondage in these comics to the use of bondage as a symbol used by suffragists and feminists. Sometimes Marston drew very consciously on images associated with these movements. In addition, the bondage represented notions of domination and submission rooted in Marston’s theories of personality and the relationship between the sexes. Bonds, and the breaking of them, represented the misappropriation of power by men and the power of women to free themselves and take their place as leaders in society. Similarly, Wonder Woman’s bare limbs were emblematic of her athleticism, strength, power and essential equality to make heroes. It’s hard to say that the depiction of Wonder Woman is completely free of sexual undertone, Marston wanted her to be beautiful. Lepore shows the clear link between the symbolism of Wonder Woman and the symbolism  of suffrage and feminism that Marston consciously referenced.

When Marston passed away in 1947, Wonder Woman fell into the hands of writers and editors who did not share his vision. She hasn’t been the same since. After World War II, the feminism she represented was not welcome in the broader culture or by the men who wrote her comics. Even after the second wave of feminism adopted her as an emblem in the 1970s, she’s not been quite at home. Perhaps we’ll have trouble getting Wonder Woman right as long as we have conflict about the roles of women in our culture.

If you’re interested in either comics or feminism, I recommend Lepore’s book. It is thoroughly researched and thoroughly readable.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Comic Book Nation by Bradford W. Wright

Kirby by Mark Evanier

Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones

Miss Mizzou by J. B. Winter

Reading Comics by Douglas Wolk

Stan Lee by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon

Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan by Rick Bowers

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Will Eisner by Michael Schumacher

Lepore, Jill. The Secret History of Wonder Woman. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.

Deal with It! by Paula White

White, Paula. Deal with It! Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

When Paula White says Deal with It! she doesn’t mean “suck it up.” In this book, she urges readers, particularly women, to acknowledge and confront their problems, that is, really deal with it. Fortunately, believers are not left to their own devices to overcome problems. God is ready and able to help His own.

Each chapter is built around a woman from the Bible and White’s view of her central problems. Some are well known names like Ruth, Esther, and Mary Magdalene . Some are not as well known: the Shunammite who welcomed Elisha into her home and Zelophehad’s daughters.



As much as things have changed over thousands of years, people are still people, and the problems these women faced have parallels today. Through God’s help, the women in White’s example overcame bad histories, weak men, lifestyle changes, excessive demands, deep hurt, competition, poor reputations, disappointments, injustices, and overwhelming expectations.

God came through for these women. Of course, as with us, God did not always choose to act immediately or in the ways they might have wanted. However, they trusted Him and persevered faithfully. God will come through, but it is important how we think and act in the meantime. We are called to do what is right, obey proper authority, stand up for justice, and hold onto faith in God all the time, especially in tough times.

White’s style is much like speech. Since she is mainly a speaker and preacher, you might expect it. In some ways, the book reads like a collection of sermons, though the chapters are tightly linked by a central theme.

As in her preaching and other books, White draws on her personal experience. She presents herself as having been a messed up young woman who made many bad decisions, had a head full of bad ideas, and beset with hang-ups. If you’d lived her life, maybe you’d have fallen into the same errors. She’s not complaining, though. She uses these examples to show how God has turned things around for her, just as he did for the Biblical women she writes about.

That is the central issue of the book. Things don’t have to remain as they are. God has the power to change them. However, we must face our problems and deal with them. We can’t let ourselves be derailed by time or difficulties, but trusting and obeying God we can see our lives renewed into something even better than we might have imagined.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Acts
The Emotional Energy Factor by Mira Kirshenbaum
Genesis
The Gospel of John
The Joy of Supernatural Thinking by Bill Bright
Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida

I first glanced through David Deida’s The Way of the Superior Man several years ago. I seemed far out to me. When I saw it recommended in another book (You are a Badass by Jen Sincero), I decided to read it. It’s still far out there.

Deida’s premise is that sexual passion has its source in the attraction of opposite poles, masculine and feminine energies. The book is written as if to a men with strong masculine sexual energy who are attracted to women with strong feminine energy, but he believes that the underlying concept applies to any sex or sexual orientation. The essential polarity is masculine and feminine, not male and female.

Masculine energy is purposeful and giving. Men have gifts for the world and they are only fulfilled when they are giving their gifts wholeheartedly.

Problems arise when men shirk their purpose and put aside sacrifice for the sake of comfort and distraction. If a man allows himself to be diverted, he will have problems in sexual relationships as well as other aspects of life.

Women represent a paradox for men. Feminine energy is focused on relationship, no purpose. However, a woman with strong feminine energy is attracted to a man with strong masculine energy. She wants him to be committed to his purpose as his first priority, but she also wants his devotion and security in the relationship. She will test him in both areas and tempt him to see if he is weak in either.

This may make it seem like women have conflicting desires and spend their days dreaming up ways to drive men crazy. Deida disagrees. What women want is for their men to be all they can be, to be their best selves. A woman can relax with such a man, trust him and allow her own feminine energy to flow.

Deida puts the relationship for successful relationships and satisfying sex on the shoulders of men. If you want it, you have to step up and be the kind of man who can be true to his highest calling and best self even in the face of fear and pain.

Sex is more than an act we perform. It is bound up in who we are, our passion for life and our capacity for  intimacy.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

No More Christian Nice Guy by Paul Coughlin

The Sacred Romance by John Eldridge with Brian Curtis

Deida, David. The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering Women, Work, and Sexual Desire. 1997. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2004.

Unimaginable by Jeremiah H. Johnston

What would the world be like if Christ had never come and the Christian church had never been create? New Testament scholar Jeremiah J. Johnston imagines it would be a bleak place. He describes why he thinks so in Unimaginable.

Johnston contrasts the Christian worldview, and its results, with cultures where non-Christian worldviews were dominant. The first of these is the pre-Christian era, especially Greek and Roman culture in the centuries shortly before and after the ministry of Jesus Christ. The second is the 20^th Century political regimes that opposed Christian mores if not religion altogether: Nazism, Fascism and Communism. Adolf Hitler and Bonito Mussolini imagined a return to a pre-Christian, pagan age of Aryan or Roman dominance. The Communists were opposed to any religion; the state operating on behalf of the workers was the dominant force. These movements in some ways were reversions to the morals that predated Christian influence.

The gods of Greece and Rome were immoral characters who had little concern for humanity. The Caesars, god-kings, were largely selfish and self-aggrandizing. In contrast, the Christian God proclaimed His love for people. He demonstrated his benevolence in Jesus, son of God and king of kings, who lived a humble life of service and sacrifice.

Life was cheap in ancient Greek and Roman culture. For instance, babies who were diseased or deformed, or simply girls, were often abandoned to die. In contrast, Christians believed that human life was inherently valuable.

Women were not considered equal to men in pre-Christian times. In contrast, women were present at the major events in Jesus’ ministry and were often acknowledged in the New Testament for their leadership in the early church.

Women were considered of little worth in the ancient world. In addition, slavery and racism were common in the in the Greek and Roman Empires. The superiority of some people was considered plain, and it was appropriate for them to dominate, control and enslave lesser people. Jesus taught that there was no meaningful difference between races (Jews or Greeks), free men and slaves, or the sexes.

There was not religious freedom in the Roman Empire. The Jews were tolerated because of the antiquity of their religion, but others were required to worship the major Roman gods and to acknowledge the divinity of Caesar. Christians were considered atheists for their refusal to acknowledge Roman gods.

Johnston describes an opening of the door in the late 19^th Century to anti-Christian ideas and morals. Philosophers and scientists of the time such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Friederich Nietzche and Sigmund Freud were committed to a materialistic view of the world. Humans were not special creations; they were simply sophisticate animals that arrived from the same undirected happenstance that brought for every other thing without purpose. Religion and morals were inventions of people, not revelations from a higher authority.

These influencers, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not, challenged Christian morals. They opened the door to devaluing human life, devaluing women (Nietche was explicit about his belief that women were inferior to men), justifying racism with science along with subjugation of “lesser” races, and the elimination of religious freedom, or even individual freedom. The likes of Hitler, Mussolini and Josef Stalin put these ideas into practice, leading to impoverishment, oppression, and death for millions of people.

Some would lay a lot of suffering at the feet of Christianity. Johnston argues that Christianity has alleviated a lot of suffering and paganism and atheism have much greater sums of human misery on their accounts.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis

Better for All the World by Harry Bruinius

IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The Language of God by Francis S. Collins

Maus by Art Spiegelman

The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek

War Against the Weak by Edwin Black

The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark

Johnston, Jeremiah H. Unimaginable: What Our World Would Be Like Without Christianity. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2017.

Making the American Body by Jonathan Black

In Making the American Body, journalist Jonathan Black explores the history of health and fitness from aerobics to Zumba. Promotion of physical fitness goes back to the founding of the United States; Black notes that Benjamin Franklin praised the use of dumbbells. Franklin was known to be a fan of swimming, too. It began to gain some momentum in the middle 1800s when German immigrants brought the gymnasium (they called it a Turnverein) to the U.S.

I was draw to the book because it has a touch of Missouriana in the person of Bernarr Macfadden, self-proclaimed “Father of Physical Culture.” Macfadden had a classic story of the early bodybuilder. He was a sick, weak kid from the Ozarks who was transformed into a paragon of masculine pulchritude by his commitment to weight training, healthy eating and clean living. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Macfadden believed clean living included an active sex life and he campaigned against prudery. His magazines, headed by Physical Culture, featured photographs of nearly naked men and women in swimsuits.

Fitness promotion is a small world, and many of its leading figures are connected. Macfadden organized a contest (probably fixed) that crowned Charles Atlas the “World’s Most Beautiful Man.” Atlas’ ads in pulp magazines and comic books are probably some of the most well-known ever, especially the bully of the beach ad. The story of this ad, told in comics form, is based on a real event in Atlas’ life when he was shamed by a muscular life guard for his scrawny form and weakness while on a date at the beach.

Macfadden and many others were inspired by Prussian strongman Sandow. They saw him at the Chicago Columbian Exposition, where his show was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr.

California became a focus of health and fitness trend that would spread across the country. Santa Monica’s Muscle Beach was a place for weight lifters and gymnasts to have fun and show off. Steve Reeves, known for playing Hercules in several films, was a product of Muscle Beach. Jack LaLanne, another wimpy kid transformed, opened gyms, brought workouts to television, and encouraged women to exercise and do strength training.

Other trends gained popularity, especially fitness focused on cardiovascular health. This brought into popular culture Dr. Kenneth Cooper, a physician to astronauts whose 1968 book Aerobics launched an industry. That industry provided a career for Richard Simmons and a second career for Jane Fonda, who was the first to emphasize exercise as a way for women to lose weight (though this was an unspoken appeal long before the 1970s). Bodybuilding made a comeback, though, especially fueled by the popularity of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I’m not especially interested in the health and fitness industry, but I found this book to be very interesting. It provides a historical context for many of the health and fitness trends that are still part of American culture.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

American Nerd by Benjamin Nugent

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Black, Jonathan. Making the American Body: The Remarkable Saga of the Men and Women Whose Feats, Feuds, and Passions Shaped Fitness History. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2013.

Women’s History Month Links

I’m coming a little late to Women’s History Month. Here is a selection of books by and about women.

Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary
The Big Necessity by Rose George (also here and here)

The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith

Doing Work You Love by Cheryl Gilman
Don’t Grow Old—Grow Up! by Dorothy Carnegie
Dreams of Iron and Steel by Deborah Cadbury

The Emotional Energy Factor by Mira Kirshenbaum (also here)

Finding Your Writer’s Voice by Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall

Girl, 15, Charming but Insane by Sue Limb
Good Dog. Stay. by Anna Quindlen
Gratitude by Melody Beattie (also here)
The Great Stink by Clare Clark

Henry Huggins by Beverly Cleary
How Much Does Your Soul Weigh? by Dorie McCubbrey
How to Write a Manual by Elizabeth Slatkin
How to Write Mysteries by Shannon OCork (also here)

Idea Mapping by Jamie Nast

Keeping a Journal You Love by Sheila Bender

The Last Taboo by Maggie Black and Ben Fawcett
The Lighthouse Stevensons by Bella Bathurst
Little Shifts by Suzanna Beth Stinnet

The Man Who Loved Books too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett
The Millionaire Maker by Loral Langemeier

Ramona the Brave by Beverly Cleary
The Relaxation Response by Herbert Bensen with Mariam Z. Klipper

Simple Pictures are Best by Nancy Willard, illustrated by Tomie de Paola (also here)
Stories for a Man’s Heart by Al and Alice Gray
The Success Principles by Jack Canfield with Janet Switzer

True Blood by Charlaine Harris

Walk Away the Pounds by Leslie Sansone
Why Aren’t You Your Own Boss by Paul & Sarah Edwards & Peter Economy
Why Good Things Happen to Good People by Stephen Post & Jill Neimark (also here)
Write It Down, Make It Happen by Henriette Anne Klaus

The Vulnerable Fortress by James R. Taylor and Elizabeth J. Van Every

You Can Write a Column by Monica McCabe Cardoza

I don’t consider the author’s sex when picking books to read or review for this site. I just read what I like. Almost 19 percent of the books I’ve reviewed so far have a woman author or coauthor. They are represented in all the major areas covered on this blog, but seem to be a little more common in fiction and the nonfiction topics of writing and self-help/psychology.