Atoms, bombs, & eskimo kisses

To Claudio Segre, an eight-year-old fan of Superman comic books, his father, Emilio, appeared to have nothing in common with the Man of Steel. Nor did the small and isolated army post in the mountains of New Mexico where he was growing up appear unusual. Then came Hiroshima. To the boy's astonishment, he discovered that Los Alamos, the town he called home, was a community of Supermen, ranging from his brilliant and prickly father to the giants of twentieth-century physics, like J.

Robert Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr, and Enrico Fermi.

Growing up among them made for an exhilarating childhood - and a difficult father-son relationship. In a memoir that recalls Geoffrey Wolff's Duke of Deception, Segre recalls his father with awe and rage, grief and humor. He remembers his father's dry wit, his explosive temper, his impatient explanations of his work. He relives the clashes between the elder Segre's elitist European culture and the son's more democratic American outlook.

Most of all, the author recalls the tentative, awkward moment when father and son playfully rubbed noses in the "Eskimo kiss" that sealed and symbolized their complex relationship. A personal exorcism and reconciliation, and a look at the immigrant experience, Atoms, Bombs and Eskimo Kisses is also a slice of history on the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima.