Jennet Conant

Last updated
Jennet Conant
BornJennet Richards Conant
(1959-07-15) July 15, 1959 (age 64)
Seoul, South Korea
OccupationNon-fiction writer, journalist
Alma mater Bryn Mawr College
Haverford College
Columbia University
Period1982–present
Subject World War II
Notable worksTuxedo Park (2002)
109 East Palace (2005)
The Irregulars (2008)
Spouse Steve Kroft
ChildrenJohn

Jennet Conant (born July 15, 1959) is an American non-fiction author and journalist. She has written five books about World War II, three of which have appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list: Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science that Changed the Course of WWII, 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos, The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington, and A Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS.

Contents

Biography

Born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in Asia and America, she received a BA degree (cum laude) in Political Theory from Bryn Mawr College in 1982, and double-majored in philosophy at Haverford College. She completed a master's degree in journalism from New York City's Columbia University in 1983. She was awarded a John J. McCloy Fellowship to study politics in Germany.

Conant went on to work at Newsweek magazine for seven years, and wrote profiles for Rolling Stone , Spy magazine, and The New York Times . Additionally, she was a contributing editor for Esquire , GQ , and Vanity Fair , from which she resigned to write her first book, Tuxedo Park. Her profile of James Watson, the co-discoverer of the double-helix, was featured in The Best American Science & Nature Writing 2004.

She lives in New York City and in Sag Harbor, New York. She is married to the journalist Steve Kroft. They have one son.

Conant is the granddaughter of James Bryant Conant, noted chemist and President of Harvard University.

Books

Reception

Conant has been widely praised by critics. Kirkus Reviews hailed Tuxedo Park as "Remarkable and remarkably told, as if F. Scott Fitzgerald had penned Batman." [17] Jonathan Yardley in a Washington Post review of The Irregulars said that "As was true of her excellent first book, Tuxedo Park, in The Irregulars she removes the dust of history from a forgotten but important figure to be reckoned with before and during the war." [18]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Camp X</span> WWII Allied training base in Canada

Camp X was the unofficial name of the secret Special Training School No. 103, a Second World War British paramilitary installation for training covert agents in the methods required for success in clandestine operations. It was located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario between Whitby and Oshawa in Ontario, Canada. The area is known today as Intrepid Park, after the code name for Sir William Stephenson, Director of British Security Co-ordination (BSC), who established the program to create the training facility.

<i>Fat Man and Little Boy</i> 1989 film by Roland Joffé

Fat Man and Little Boy is a 1989 American epic historical war drama film directed by Roland Joffé, who co-wrote the script with Bruce Robinson. The story follows the Manhattan Project, the secret Allied endeavor to develop the first nuclear weapons during World War II. The film is named after "Little Boy" and "Fat Man", the two bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Princess Märtha of Sweden</span> Crown Princess of Norway (1901–1954)

Princess Märtha of Sweden was Crown Princess of Norway as the spouse of the future King Olav V from 1929 until her death in 1954. The current king, Harald V, is her only son. As Olav only became king in 1957, Märtha never became Queen of Norway.

Jane Foster Zlatovski (1912–1979) allegedly engaged, with her husband, George Zlatovski, in covert activities on behalf of the Soviet Union while employed in sensitive U.S. Government wartime agencies during World War II. They were indicted in 1957. Their case was never tried and both Zlatovskis denied the accusations.

<i>The Gremlins</i> 1943 novel by Roald Dahl

The Gremlins is a children's book written by British author Roald Dahl and published in 1943. In writing the book, Dahl draws on his own experience as a Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot during the Second World War. The story's principal character Gus, an RAF pilot, has his Hawker Hurricane destroyed over the English Channel by a gremlin—mischievous creatures who were part of RAF folklore. As they parachute into the water, Gus convinces the gremlins to join forces against a common enemy; Hitler and the Nazis. It was Dahl's first book and was written for Walt Disney Productions, in anticipation of a feature-length animated film that was never made.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British Security Co-ordination</span> British intelligence agency

British Security Co-ordination (BSC) was a covert organisation set up in New York City by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in May 1940 upon the authorisation of the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenneth Bainbridge</span> American physicist (1904–1996)

Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge was an American physicist at Harvard University who worked on cyclotron research. His accurate measurements of mass differences between nuclear isotopes allowed him to confirm Albert Einstein's mass–energy equivalence concept. He was the Director of the Manhattan Project's Trinity nuclear test, which took place July 16, 1945. Bainbridge described the Trinity explosion as a "foul and awesome display". He remarked to J. Robert Oppenheimer immediately after the test, "Now we are all sons of bitches." This marked the beginning of his dedication to ending the testing of nuclear weapons and to efforts to maintain civilian control of future developments in that field.

"Lamb to the Slaughter" is a 1953 short story by Roald Dahl. It was initially rejected, along with four other stories, by The New Yorker, but was published in Harper's Magazine in September 1953. It was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (AHP) that starred Barbara Bel Geddes and Harold J. Stone. Originally broadcast on April 13, 1958, this was one of only 17 AHP episodes directed by Hitchcock. The episode was ranked #59 of the Top 100 Episodes by TV Guide in 2009. The story was adapted for Dahl's British TV series Tales of the Unexpected. Dahl included it in his short story compilation Someone Like You. The narrative element of the housewife killing her husband and letting the policemen eat the evidence was used by Pedro Almodóvar in his 1984 movie What Have I Done to Deserve This?, with a leg of mutton.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fifinella</span> Mascot of the U.S. Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) in World War II

Fifinella was a female gremlin designed by Walt Disney for a proposed film from Roald Dahl's book The Gremlins. During World War II, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) asked permission to use the image as their official mascot, and the Disney Company granted them the rights.

Ernest L. Cuneo was an American lawyer, newspaperman, author, and intelligence liaison. He was also a professional football player in the National Football League.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Los Alamos, New Mexico</span> Census-designated place in New Mexico, United States

Los Alamos is a census-designated place in Los Alamos County, New Mexico, United States, that is recognized as one of the development and creation places of the atomic bomb—the primary objective of the Manhattan Project by Los Alamos National Laboratory during World War II. The town is located on four mesas of the Pajarito Plateau, and had a population of about 19,200 as of 2022. It is the county seat and one of two population centers in the county known as census-designated places (CDPs); the other is White Rock.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North American Newspaper Alliance</span>

The North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) was a large newspaper syndicate in operation between 1922 and 1980. NANA employed writers such as Grantland Rice, Joseph Alsop, Michael Stern, Lothrop Stoddard, Dorothy Thompson, George Schuyler, Pauline Frederick, Sheilah Graham Westbrook, Edna Ferber, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amy Elizabeth Thorpe</span> British intelligence agent (1910–1963)

Amy Elizabeth Thorpe, also known as Betty Pack, Betty Thorpe, Elizabeth Pack, and Amy Brousse; was an Anglo-American spy, codenamed Cynthia, who worked for British Security Coordination (BSC) which was set up in New York City in 1940 during World War II by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). She later worked for the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Her method was sexual and romantic seduction of high-level foreign diplomats. She successfully obtained some intelligence on the German Enigma machines and the Black Chamber in Poland, obtained the cipher books of fascist Italy, and stole the Vichy French naval codes out of a locked safe within an embassy. In an article published two months before her death she wrote, "...in the dangerous years of Nazi aggression I looked upon myself as a soldier serving my country. No sacrifice was too great for the soldiers. I felt that, in my own way, I could do no less than they."

Paul Cushing Child was an American civil servant, diplomat, and artist known for being the husband of celebrity chef and author Julia Child.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charlotte Serber</span> Manhattan Project member (1911–1967)

Charlotte Serber was an American journalist, statistician and librarian. She was the librarian of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, and the laboratory's only female group leader. After the war she attempted to secure a position as a librarian at the Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, but was rejected for lack of a security clearance; the likely reason was due to her political views. She later became a production assistant for the Broadway Theatre, and an interviewer for Louis Harris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Priscilla Duffield</span> American secretary and office manager (1918–2009)

Priscilla Duffield worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. She was secretary to Ernest O. Lawrence at the Radiation Laboratory, and to J. Robert Oppenheimer at the Los Alamos Laboratory. After the war she was executive assistant to directors of Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the National Accelerator Laboratory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Patterson Loomis</span> American physician (1859–1907)

Henry Patterson Loomis was an American physician who served as president of the American Academy of Medicine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy McKibbin</span> Manhattan Project project manager (1897–1985)

Dorothy McKibbin worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. She ran the project's office at 109 East Palace Avenue in Santa Fe, through which staff moving to the Los Alamos Laboratory had to pass through to obtain security credentials and directions to their new workplace. She was known as the "first lady of Los Alamos", and was often the first point of contact for new arrivals. She retired when the Santa Fe office closed in 1963.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roald Dahl bibliography</span> List of works written by Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) was a British author and scriptwriter, and "the most popular writer of children's books since Enid Blyton", according to Philip Howard, the literary editor of The Times. He was raised by his Norwegian mother, who took him on annual trips to Norway, where she told him the stories of trolls and witches present in the dark Scandinavian fables. Dahl was influenced by the stories, and returned to many of the themes in his children's books. His mother also nurtured a passion in the young Dahl for reading and literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katherine Oppenheimer</span> American biologist (1910–1972)

Katherine Vissering "Kitty" Oppenheimer was a German American biologist, botanist, and a member of the Communist Party of America until leaving in the 1930s. Her husbands were Frank Ramseyer, Joe Dallet, Richard Stewart Harrison, and physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II.

References

  1. Jennet Conant, My Grandfather and the Bomb Archived 2012-06-16 at the Wayback Machine , Los Angeles Times, May 2, 2005
  2. Conant, Jennet (November 2007). 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of los Alamos. Simon and Schuster. ISBN   9781416585428.
  3. Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association
  4. Conant, Jennet (2011). A Covert Affair. Simon and Schuster. ISBN   9781439163535.
  5. Amazon.com
  6. Barnes and Noble
  7. Conant, Jennet (2017-09-19). Man of the Hour. Simon and Schuster. ISBN   9781476730882.
  8. Bird, Kai (2017-11-07). "An Acclaimed Biographer Takes On Her Grandfather, the Atomic Scientist James B. Conant". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2024-01-21.
  9. Wellerstein, Alex (2017). "History: Of chemistry and conflict". Nature. 549 (7670): 28–29. Bibcode:2017Natur.549...28W. doi: 10.1038/549028a .
  10. Conant, Jennet (2020). The Great Secret. W. W. Norton. ISBN   978-1324002505.
  11. Anderson, Scott (28 August 2020). "War — What Is It Good For? Chemotherapy, Apparently". New York Times. Retrieved 30 September 2021.
  12. Scutts, Joanna (2023-11-01). "She Wasn't There to Make Friends". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2024-01-21.
  13. Nagorski, Andrew (Oct 24, 2023). "'Fierce Ambition' Review: Maggie Higgins at the Front". Wall Street Journal.
  14. "Author talks 'Fierce Ambition: The Life and Legend of War Correspondent Maggie Higgins'". ABC7 New York. 2023-11-07. Retrieved 2024-01-21.
  15. Willens, Michele. "Legendary War Correspondent Maggie Higgins Chronicled by Conant". www.ourtownny.com. Retrieved 2024-01-21.
  16. "The Life and Legend of Maggie Higgins, Explored in a New Book". airmail.news. Retrieved 2024-01-21.
  17. Kirkus Reviews
  18. Jonathan Yardley on 'The Irregulars'
External videos
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg Booknotes interview with Conant on Tuxedo Park, June 9, 2002, C-SPAN
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg Presentation by Conant on 109 East Palace, June 12, 2005, C-SPAN
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg Presentation by Conant on The Irregulars, September 10, 2008, C-SPAN
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg Presentation by Conant on A Covert Affair, April 5, 2011, C-SPAN
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg After Words interview with Conant on Man of the Hour, December 2, 2017, C-SPAN