I want to share another women’s history treasure, which appeared in one of my social media feeds immediately after the Oscars: a podcast mini-series titled Lost Women of the Manhattan Project. The mini-series focuses on eight women scientists, but does not allow the listener to forget that hundreds of women scientists were involved in the Manhattan Project. Each of the short episodes opens and closes with a recital of the names of women who worked as scientists on the project.

The mini-series provides an interesting counterpoint to the film Oppenheimer, in which the women are represented by only one of their number.* In all fairness, biographical films are inherently limited in what they can portray. On the other hand, that kind of reasoning is why women have been, and obviously still are, left out of the historical narrative. One reason the film Hidden Figures is so powerful is that it answers a question that was not asked in films like The Right Stuff and Apollo 13. Perhaps we need a film of The Girls of Atomic City  as a pendant to Oppenheimer. In the meantime, we have this series of brief podcast episodes to give us a glimpse of the possibilities.  Here is the link: https://www.lostwomenofscience.org/season-6

The Lost Women of the Manhattan Project is the creation of Lost Women of Science, which produces podcast episodes devoted to individual women scientists and has recently begun a news series of interviews with people working on the history of women in STEM.

Good stuff all around.

*Which is better than none of them appearing at all.

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Just a reminder, The Dragon from Chicago is available for preorder wherever you get your books. If you want a signed copy, you can order it here: https://www.semcoop.com/ingram-0?isbn=9780807063064 There is a space at the bottom of the order page to add special instructions. Request a signed copy there, and specify how you want the book to be signed.

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Come back on Monday for many questions and an answer with Jennifer Lunden, author of American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body’s Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life.