krista225's reviews
1143 reviews

 I bounced between the ebook and the audiobook for this one. I'd mostly listen in the car, which means there were a lot of interesting tidbits that I didn't have a chance to highlight. Reading the book allowed me to use the highlighter and note-taking tools. 

I'll share a couple of things that caught my attention late in the book because they gave me pause and made me think. They challenged my conceptions of racism and/or activism. 

The quote:
Moral and educational suasion breathes the assumption that racist minds must be changed before racist policy, ignoring history that says otherwise. Look at the soaring White support for desegregated schools and neighborhoods decades after the policies changed in the 1950s and 1960s. Look at the soaring White support for interracial marriage decades after the policy changed in 1967. Look at the soaring support for Obamacare after its passage in 2010. Racist policymakers drum up fear of antiracist policies through racist ideas, knowing if the policies are implemented, the fears they circulate will not come to pass. Once the fears do not come to pass, people will let down their guards as they enjoy the benefits. Once they clearly benefit, most Americans will support and become the defenders of the antiracist policies they once feared.

My note on this section: 
This challenged my initial thoughts on the matter. I thought hearts had to be changed before policy, but he's right. More hearts were changed after policies were implemented than before. Hmmm.

That hmmm is me battling with myself and trying to let go of a fairly strongly held belief. To my mind, no one changes a policy unless they recognize the harm being perpetrated. Mind you, I still believe this might be true at an individual level for those people in a position that actually allows them to propose and pass policy changes. Yet, for the average person outside that power structure, it was the policy that made the changes more common and more acceptable, even if it took a generation or two for acceptance to become widespread. 

Here's another quote: 
We use the terms “protest” and “demonstration” interchangeably, at our own peril, like we interchangeably use the terms “mobilizing” and “organizing.” A protest is organizing people for a prolonged campaign that forces racist power to change a policy. A demonstration is mobilizing people momentarily to publicize a problem. Speakers and placards and posts at marches, rallies, petitions, and viral hashtags demonstrate the problem. Demonstrations are, not surprisingly, a favorite of suasionists. Demonstrations annoy power in the way children crying about something they will never get annoy parents. Unless power cannot economically or politically or professionally afford bad press—as power could not during the Cold War, as power cannot during election season, as power cannot close to bankruptcy—power typically ignores demonstrations.

My reaction: 
Ouch. It makes all the effort and outrage that I have been witnessing in my social media threads seem pointless and ineffective. That's insulting, not to me, but to the passionate and motivated people putting themselves in harm's way just to bring attention to a problem. 

And when does a demonstration of protest become a catalyst for change? I'm thinking back to some of the student protests on campuses across the country concerning the Isreal/Palestine conflict. Some effectively changed their college's or university's financial engagement with Israel. I remember the headlines. So, surely those student demonstrations became problematic enough that the powerful universities had no choice but to capitulate. 

This is still rather nuanced and I'm still parsing. So forgive me if I've misrepresented or misinterpreted something. I'm learning. And unlearning. 

 

I really liked the first book in this series, so I was excited to keep going. I am so disappointed. It felt like this was a partial book. Nothing was truly resolved in several of the plotlines. If I keep reading, I fear more of the same as the author draws out the love stories and the family drama. 

I was so excited to read this. I had heard about it for years and my expectations were high. Too high. 

I was soooooo bored. The plot did not move quickly. There was just too much description and pointless dwelling on the mundane aspects of the characters' lives. Paragraph upon paragraph was dedicated to unnecessary minutiae. 

The concept was great, but the execution put me to sleep—literally. Every night for three months, I fell asleep reading this because nothing kept my attention for very long. It just made me sleepy. Thus, the two-star rating. 

So most people have heard of the Manhattan Project, which was led by Robert Oppenheimer. Often the story is told from Oppenheimer's point of view. In the Hill of Secrets, this historical event is once again explored, but this time through the lens of the wives and children of the scientists involved in the development of the atomic bombs, which would later destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The main character is Christine who is married to one of the scientists working with Oppenheimer. She's an intelligent, headstrong woman, but still very much a product of the era in which this story takes place. I believe her character development is the most profound. 

Another major character is Gertie. When the story starts out she is a 16 year old girl who befriends Christine. In the months it takes to develop the bomb, Gertie and Christine become very close and share frustrations over all of the secrets surrounding their loved ones' work. Secrets are frustrating, especially when they're being kept from you through the thin veneer of the government agents tasked with protecting national security. 

Most of the tension in this book comes from the secrets that must be kept both in and out of the lab. Secrets become an instrumental force in the character development of both Christine and Gertie, as well as some of the other secondary characters. 

I thought this was a very interesting perspective of this event and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Would recommend.