Read To Succeed has expanded the annual Unplug and Read week into Unplug and Read month this year and what better book to unplug with than the 2016 One Book Community Read.

One Book of Rutherford County has chosen "The Girls of Atomic City" by Denise Kiernan for its 2016 selection. This nonfiction work profiles the women of Oak Ridge who worked on the Manhattan Project, including one woman who grew up in Eagleville.

Butler Touchden talks about the Read To Succeed One Book and how it focuses on Oak Ridge, Tennessee's role in making the Atomic Bomb...

"The community has really rallied around this year's choice," said Lisa Mitchell, executive director, Read To Succeed. "This is my sixth One Book to be involved with and I have already gotten more positive feedback than any of our previous choices. I think this is probably due to the local ties and so many of us that just weren't aware of how things played out during that time."

One of the Manhattan Project's secret cities, Oak Ridge was home to more than 75,000 people, many of them young women and some from Rutherford County, and a gigantic secret that wasn't revealed until the bomb "Little Boy" was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan.

The New York Times bestseller tells the stories of the women who lived and worked in the secret city.

To many on our committee, this book was important because it documents the unheard stories of a generation that we are losing too quickly.

Copies of the One Book can be found around the county at "Book Crossing" locations, which are marked by one of the Read To Succeed red boxes. Found in local businesses and libraries books can be borrowed for free.

In each book you will find a sticker on the inside cover with information about how to log on to the One Book web page and share your comments about the book after you've read it and get registered in a prize drawing. You can pass the copy along to a friend, bring it back to the location where you found it or drop it by any of the other locations.

Once you read it log onto readtosucceed.org/unplug-read/ and log your "unplugged time," Mitchell said.

Each year, Read To Succeed joins with Linebaugh Library and various other community partners to ask adults in Rutherford County to all read the same book. Over the years, the program promoted nonfiction, literary fiction, and popular young adult choices.

Members of the One Book Selection Committee read and discuss countless books before deciding on the annual selection.

Previous One Books were: The Great Santini, Pat Conroy in 2008; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver in 2009; The Soloist, Mark Salzman in 2010; Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Helen Simonson in 2011; The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins in 2012; The Fault in Our Stars, John Green in 2013; The Last Policeman, Ben Winters in 2014; and The Rosie Project, Graeme Simsion in 2015.

Read To Succeed is a community partnership created to promote reading in Rutherford County, with emphasis on family literacy. For more information, visit readtosucceed.org.