May 14, 2013

New Arrivals · Large Print History

These titles were recently added to the collection of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.

Bunker Hill : a city, a siege, a revolution

May 3, 2013

Philbrick, Nathaniel.

817 pages, 16 pages of unnumbered plates : illustrations ; 23 cm.

The girls of Atomic City : the untold story of the women who helped win World War II

March 22, 2013

Kiernan, Denise.

655 pages (large print), 16 unnumbered pages : ill. ; 23 cm

Originally published: New York : Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2013.

Revelation, August 1945 -- Everything will be taken care of : train to nowhere, August 1943. Tubealloy : the Bohemian Grove to the Appalachian Hills, September 1942 -- Peaches and pearls : the taking of Site X, Fall 1942. Tubealloy : Ida and the atom, 1934 -- Through the gates : Clinton Engineer Works, Fall 1943. Tubealloy : Lise and fission, 1938 -- Bull pens and creeps : the Project's welcome for new employees. Tubealloy : Leona and success in Chicago, December 1942 -- Only temporary : spring into Summer, 1944. Tubealloy : the quest for product -- To work. Tubealloy : the couriers -- Rhythms of life. Tubealloy : Security, censorship, and the press -- The one about fireflies. Tubealloy : pumpkins, spies, and chicken soup, Fall 1944 -- The unspoken : sweethearts and secrets. Tubealloy : combining efforts in the New Year -- Curiosity and silence. Tubealloy : the project's crucial spring -- Innocence lost. Tubealloy : hope and the haberdasher, April-May 1945 -- Sand jumps in the desert, July 1945 -- The gadget revealed -- Dawn of a thousand suns -- Life in the new age.

In this book the author traces the story of the unsung World War II workers in Oak Ridge, Tennessee through interviews with dozens of surviving women and other Oak Ridge residents. This is the story of the young women of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, who unwittingly played a crucial role in one of the most significant moments in U.S. history. The Tennessee town of Oak Ridge was created from scratch in 1942. One of the Manhattan Project's secret cities, it did not appear on any maps until 1949, and yet at the height of World War II it was using more electricity than New York City and was home to more than 75,000 people, many of them young women recruited from small towns across the South. Their jobs were shrouded in mystery, but they were buoyed by a sense of shared purpose, close friendships, and a surplus of handsome scientists and Army men. But against this wartime backdrop, a darker story was unfolding. The penalty for talking about their work, even the most innocuous details, was job loss and eviction. One woman was recruited to spy on her coworkers. They all knew something big was happening at Oak Ridge, but few could piece together the true nature of their work until the bomb "Little Boy" was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, and the secret was out. The shocking revelation: the residents of Oak Ridge were enriching uranium for the atomic bomb. Though the young women originally believed they would leave Oak Ridge after the war, many met husbands there, made lifelong friends, and still call the seventy-year-old town home. The reverberations from their work there, work they did not fully understand at the time, are still being felt today.

Ike's bluff : president Eisenhower's secret battle to save the world [large print]

March 21, 2013

Thomas, Evan, 1951-

New York : Little, Brown and Co., 2012.

x, 655 p. (large print) : ill. ; 25 cm.

Introduction: Tell no one. Duty: 1953-1956. Confidence ; The card player ; Positive loyalty ; Cross of iron ; Gentleman's agreement ; Deception ; Learning to love the bomb ; The chamber pot ; Strange genius ; "Don't worry, I'll confuse them" ; Meeting Mr. Khrushchev ; The devil's grip ; Bows and arrows ; Rising storm ; Subtle and brutal -- Honor: 1957-1961. Dark star ; The great equation ; The strong say nothing ; Guns of August ; Missile gap ; Looking for a partner ; Sweet words ; A regular pixie ; "The pilot's alive" ; "I'm just fed up!" ; The underestimated man -- Epilogue: Peace.

Behind the bland smile and apparent simplemindedness, Eisenhower was a brilliant, intellectual tactician, and a master of calculated duplicity. Facing the Soviet Union, China, and his own generals, some of whom believed a first strike was the only means of survival, Eisenhower would make his boldest and riskiest bet yet, one of such enormity that there could be but two outcomes: the survival of the world, or its end.

Visiting Tom : a man, a highway, and the road to Roughneck Grace

March 1, 2013

Perry, Michael, 1964-

Thorndike, Me. : Center Point Pub., 2012.

319 p. (large print) : ill. ; 23 cm.

Originally published: New York : Harper, c2012.

Tom is 82-year-old Tom Hartwig, an old-timer best known locally for building and firing homemade cannons. Toiling in a shop that Perry describes as an "antique store stocked by Rube Goldberg, curated by Hunter Thompson, and rearranged by a small earthquake," Tom works from scratch to make everything from shovel handles to parts for quarter-million-dollar farm equipment. He has an endless reservoir of stories dating back to the days of his prize Model A. Visiting Tom is dominated by the elderly man's equanimity and ultimately by unvarnished tenderness. Tuesdays with Morrie meets Shop Class as Soulcraft as Michael Perry, a middle-aged father of daughters, finds guidance and inspiration in visits with his octogenarian, cannon-shooting neighbor. Visiting Tom celebrates the wisdom, heart, and sass of a vanishing generation that embodies the indomitable spirit of small-town America.