Jennet Conant

Presents the story of financier Alfred Lee Loomis and his role in the American victory during World War II, discussing Tuxedo Park, the lavish safe haven he created for some of the world's greatest scientists to meet and share ideas.

A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II

Tuxedo Park

Traces the story of the physicists and their families who lived in the then-secret city of Los Alamos during the invention of the atomic bomb, years during which they lied to outsiders about their daily existences and endured harsh living conditions with minimal privacy. By the author of Tuxedo Park. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos

109 East Palace

Conant tells the story of young writer Roald Dahl who is assigned by His Majesty's Government to Washington, D.C. as a diplomat to gather intelligence about America's isolationist circles. In the course of his "spying," he meets or works closely with David Ogilvy, Ian Fleming, and the great spymaster William Stephenson (aka Intrepid).

Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington

The Irregulars

The gripping story of a chemical weapons catastrophe, the cover-up, and how one American Army doctor's discovery led to the development of the first drug to combat cancer, known today as chemotherapy.

The Classified World War II Disaster That Launched the War on Cancer

The Great Secret

The Life and Legend of Maggie Higgins, America's Fearless War Correspondent

Looking for Trouble

The Classified World War II Disaster that Launched the War on Cancer

Bestselling author Jennet Conant brings us a stunning account of Julia and Paul Child’s experiences as members of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in the Far East during World War II and the tumultuous years when they were caught up in the McCarthy Red spy hunt in the 1950s and behaved with bravery and honor. It is the fascinating portrait of a group of idealistic men and women who were recruited by the citizen spy service, slapped into uniform, and dispatched to wage political warfare in remote outposts in Ceylon, India, and China. The eager, inexperienced 6 foot 2 inch Julia springs to life in these pages, a gangly golf-playing California girl who had never been farther abroad than Tijuana. Single and thirty years old when she joined the staff of Colonel William Donovan, Julia volunteered to be part of the OSS’s ambitious mission to develop a secret intelligence network across Southeast Asia. Her first post took her to the mountaintop idyll of Kandy, the headquarters of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, the supreme commander of combined operations. Julia reveled in the glamour and intrigue of her overseas assignment and lifealtering romance with the much older and more sophisticated Paul Child, who took her on trips into the jungle, introduced her to the joys of curry, and insisted on educating both her mind and palate. A painter drafted to build war rooms, Paul was a colorful, complex personality. Conant uses extracts from his letters in which his sharp eye and droll wit capture the day-to-day confusion, excitement, and improbability of being part of a cloak- and-dagger operation. When Julia and Paul were transferred to Kunming, a rugged outpost at the foot of the Burma Road, they witnessed the chaotic end of the war in China and the beginnings of the Communist revolution that would shake the world. A Covert Affair chronicles their friendship with a brilliant and eccentric array of OSS agents, including Jane Foster, a wealthy, free-spirited artist, and Elizabeth MacDonald, an adventurous young reporter. In Paris after the war, Julia and Paul remained close to their intelligence colleagues as they struggled to start new lives, only to find themselves drawn into a far more terrifying spy drama. Relying on recently unclassified OSS and FBI documents, as well as previously unpublished letters and diaries, Conant vividly depicts a dangerous time in American history, when those who served their country suddenly found themselves called to account for their unpopular opinions and personal relationships.

Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS

A Covert Affair

Julian Smith

Ishmael Reed

Julia Flynn Siler

Naomi Hirahara

Jane Hirshfield

Mark Wallace

Doug Peacock

Lydia Lee

D. J. Waldie

Joseph Giovannini

Désirée Zamorano

Laura Fraser

Joy Lanzendorfer

Santi Elijah Holley

Monica Corcoran Harel

Jessica Klein

Robert Ito

Adam Mayer

Emma Pratt

Ky-Phong Tran

Matt Twombly

Jessica Zack

The Gimme Shelter Issue

Alta Journal Issue 24

A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science that Changed the Course of World War II

On the night of December 2, 1943, the Luftwaffe bombed a critical Allied port in Bari, Italy, sinking seventeen ships and killing over a thousand servicemen and hundreds of civilians. Caught in the surprise air raid was the John Harvey, an American Liberty ship carrying a top-secret cargo of 2,000 mustard bombs to be used in retaliation if the Germans resorted to gas warfare. After young sailors began suddenly dying with mysterious symptoms, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Alexander, a doctor and chemical weapons expert, was dispatched to investigate. He quickly diagnosed mustard gas exposure, which Churchill denied. Undaunted, Alexander defied British officials and persevered with his investigation. His final report on the Bari casualties was immediately classified, but not before his breakthrough observations about the toxic effects of mustard on white blood cells caught the attention of Colonel Cornelius P. Rhoads - a pioneering physician and research scientist as brilliant as he was arrogant and self-destructive - who recognized that the poison was both a killer and a cure, and ushered in a new era of cancer research. Deeply researched and beautifully written, The Great Secret is the remarkable story of how horrific tragedy gave birth to medical triumph.

"James B. Conant was a towering figure who stood at the center of the great crises and challenges of the twentieth century. He set an extraordinary example of public service without ever holding elected office. A member of the greatest generation, there was probably no one who made a larger mark in more areas of American life, shaping national policy as a scientist, nuclear pioneer, Cold War statesman, diplomat, and educational reformer for nearly fifty years. As a brilliant young chemist, he supervised the production of poison gas in WWI. As the Nazi threat loomed, he boldly led the interventionist cause in WWII and was tapped by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to be one of the scientific chiefs at the helm of the Manhattan Project, personally overseeing the massive secret effort to develop the atomic bomb and making the fateful recommendation to drop it on Hiroshima to bring the war to a quick and decisive end. He went on to become one of America's first cold warriors, led the bitter fight to reject the hydrogen bomb, and campaigned tirelessly for the international control of atomic weapons. He continued to exert his influence as President Eisenhower's high commissioner, and then ambassador, to Germany, helping to secure the country's future and strengthen Europe's defenses against Soviet aggression. He achieved national prominence in his twenty-year reign as president of Harvard--the very symbol of the intellectual and social elite--and yet was a champion of meritocracy and open admissions, helping to create the SAT and devoting his later life to improving public schools as the "engine of democracy." Even as he worked to safeguard the American way of life, he feared the nuclear force he helped harness was so dangerous it could lead to the extinction of mankind. In this intimate account of his extraordinary life, his granddaughter, ... bestselling author Jennet Conant, draws on hundreds of documents, diaries, and letters to reveal the agonizing decisions he was forced to make while serving his country in three wars--two hot, and one cold--and the burden of guilt he bore for his actions and for always putting duty before everything else. For all his brilliance, he never understood the depression that ravaged his family but struggled to keep his wife from succumbing, in the process alienating both his sons. With Man of the Hour, Jennet Conant paints a rich, nuanced portrait of a great American leader and visionary, the last of a vanishing breed."--Jacket.

James B. Conant, Warrior Scientist

Man of the Hour

Jennet Conant

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