Jon Hunner’s fascinating narrative history, an “instant city,” tells the story of Los Alamos. Created in 1943, Los Alamos quickly grew to accommodate six thousand people: scientists and experts who came to work in the top-secret laboratories, others drawn by jobs in support industries, and the families. How these people, as a community, faced both the fevered rush to create an atomic bomb and the intensity of the subsequent cold-war era is the focus of Hunner’s historical narrative.