These Classmates were know to be deceased as of July 2020. Please notify lass President Ann Richardson Berkey should you learn of the death of a classmate not listed here.
Monthly Archives: September 2020
1970’s “Reunion in the Cloud” Programming is Starting Soon!
To join the meeting and receive a Zoom link, please register by emailing our administrative assistant, Alicia, at mountholyoke70@gmail.com.
Please mark your calendars and join us on Thursday, September 24 at 7PM EDT (details below) for our first virtual reunion program session, featuring Nancy Thorndike Greenspan. Nancy had been scheduled to moderate our Reunion panel discussion on writers and writing at MHC the day after her new book, Atomic Spy: The Dark Lives of Klaus Fuchs, was published in NY. As the Reunion has been indefinitely postponed, Nancy has graciously agreed instead to inaugurate the Zoom series of “Reunion in the Cloud” programs we will be having until we can re-schedule our on-campus event.
Our second program, on Thursday, October 22 at 7PM EDT (in time for Hallowe’en), features Libby Tucker Gould presenting a discussion of her book, Haunted Halls, on the folklore of American college campuses.
Registration Notifications for these and future events will be sent by e-mail. Please also check our class website, https://new.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/1970 (also reachable indirectly through http://alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/) for more information on these and upcoming programs. We hope you will also consider joining the class page on Facebook, Mount Holyoke Class of 70, through Facebook or by contacting Jill Vollmer Blackwood at jblackwood48@gmail.com. Please be sure we have your current email address by checking the on-line alumnae directory at https://alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/ so that you won’t miss out on any of our program announcements.
We look forward to seeing you again at these and other programs, and we welcome your suggestions for and offers to volunteer your participation in future sessions.
Barbara Cooke Monks (mailto:bcmonks@gmail.com)
Arleen Heiss (mailto:arleenheiss@yahoo.com)
Helen Disenhaus (helen.disenhaus@gmail.com) .
Exactly 75 years ago, on the evening of July 24, 1945, during the Potsdam conference, Truman approached Stalin without an interpreter and as casually as he could, told him that the United States had a “new weapon of unusual destructive force.” To his utter surprise, Stalin showed little interest, replying only that he hoped the United States would make “good use of it against the Japanese.” In the first salvo of the undeclared Cold War, a top British nuclear physicist had provided the Soviets with invaluable intelligence about the atomic bomb program. It would take even more years before the United States knew the trajectory of the post-war order had forever been altered.
Nancy’s book explores the remarkably complex life of Klaus Fuchs. German by birth, British by naturalization, Communist by conviction, Klaus Fuchs was a fearless Nazi resister, a brilliant scientist, and an infamous spy. He was convicted of espionage by Britain in 1950 for handing over the designs of the plutonium bomb to the Soviets, and he has gone down in history as one of the most dangerous agents in American and British history. He put an end to America’s nuclear hegemony and single-handedly heated up the Cold War. But, was Klaus Fuchs really evil?
FROM SOME REVIEWS
One of USA Today’s “Books Not to Miss”
One of the New York Times’s Top-Ten recommended books
An Editors’ pick from the New York Times
“Enthralling and riveting” … “particularly thorough and revealing.” The New York Times Sunday Book Review
“Well told, [spy] stories combine the drama of a police procedural (how did they do it?) with the ambiguities of a psychological thriller (why did they do it?). Nancy Thorndike Greenspan seeks to answer both those questions in the very well told Atomic Spy…a deeply nuanced and sympathetic portrait of a scientist-spy.” Nature
“Nancy Thorndike Greenspan’s biography offers a new look at Fuchs’s story, all the more fascinating for its deviations from typical spy-movie script.” The New Criterion
“Greenspan reconstructs the life and career of Fuchs through detailed research and a riveting narrative. The Wire
“Greenspan gives us fresh and fascinating insights.” The Wall Street Journal
“This richly detailed work . . . blurs the lines between courage and treachery in thought-provoking ways.” Publisher’s Weekly
“A three-dimensional portrait of Fuchs … more nuanced than previously presented.” Digital PW
“A detailed and authoritative yet equally interesting and readable study . . . From student to scientist to spy, Fuchs is portrayed as a careful and quiet yet passionate man who nevertheless persisted.” Library Journal
