September’s Brown Bag Lunch Speakers were Patricia Klaus and Shirley Streshinsky. An overflow audience enjoyed stories and slides from the book, An Atomic Love Story: The Extraordinary Women in Robert Oppenheimer’s Life.
This book adds more biographical details to the portrait of Oppenheimer, showing that his interest in life and love(s) equaled his famous preoccupation with Death and physics. (After witnessing the detonation of the A-bomb, he quoted the Bhagavad Gita, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”) Relationships with three “extraordinary” women seemed to bring this “destroyer of worlds” back to everyday reality. The book retraces the westward journeys of these women, describes each one’s relationship with Oppenheimer and shows how each woman experienced the new freedoms and shifting social expectations of women entering the Atomic Age.
Both authors have published historical biographies or taught history, with additional experience in journalism and travel writing. It’s quite an honor to have them speak at our Albany YMCA/Albany Library speakers forum.
See entire program on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMBQKLRoqYk&feature=share
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