Download or read book The American Atom written by Philip L. Cantelon and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For this edition (first in 1984), the editors have updated the collection of primary documents which tell the story of atomic energy in the US from the discovery of fission through the development of nuclear weapons, international proliferation, and attempts at control. The book also includes a new chapter, reflects on Chernoyl, Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book Life Under a Cloud written by Allan M. Winkler and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents an account of the impact of the atomic bomb on American political and cultural life. This title delineates how fears of nuclear disaster have become a part of our culture. Tracing the debate over military and civilian uses of atomic power, it reveals the irony, anxiety, and official insanity of the atomic age.

Download or read book Atomic Age America written by Martin V. Melosi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Atomic Age America looks at the broad influence of atomic energy¿focusing particularly on nuclear weapons and nuclear power¿on the lives of Americans within a world context. The text examines the social, political, diplomatic, environmental, and technical impacts of atomic energy on the 20th and 21st centuries, with a look back to the origins of atomic theory.

Download or read book Atomic Narratives and American Youth written by Michael Scheibach and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-09-17 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, numerous "atomic narratives"--books, newspapers, magazines, textbooks, movies, and television programs--addressed the implications of the bomb. Post-World War II youth encountered atomic narratives in their daily lives at school, at home and in their communities, and were profoundly affected by what they read and saw. This multidisciplinary study examines the exposure of American youth to atomic narratives during the ten years following World War II. In addition, it examines the broader "social narrative of the atom," which included educational, social, cultural, and political activities that surrounded and involved American youth. The activities ranged from school and community programs to movies and television shows to government-sponsored traveling exhibits on atomic energy. The book also presents numerous examples of writings by postwar adolescents, who clearly expressed their conflicted feelings about growing up in such a tumultuous time, and shows how many of the issues commonly associated with the sixties generation, such as peace, fellowship, free expression, and environmental concern, can be traced to this earlier generation.

Download or read book The Making of the Atomic Bomb written by Richard Rhodes and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 890 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award** The definitive history of nuclear weapons—from the turn-of-the-century discovery of nuclear energy to J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project—this epic work details the science, the people, and the sociopolitical realities that led to the development of the atomic bomb. This sweeping account begins in the 19th century, with the discovery of nuclear fission, and continues to World War Two and the Americans’ race to beat Hitler’s Nazis. That competition launched the Manhattan Project and the nearly overnight construction of a vast military-industrial complex that culminated in the fateful dropping of the first bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reading like a character-driven suspense novel, the book introduces the players in this saga of physics, politics, and human psychology—from FDR and Einstein to the visionary scientists who pioneered quantum theory and the application of thermonuclear fission, including Planck, Szilard, Bohr, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Teller, Meitner, von Neumann, and Lawrence. From nuclear power’s earliest foreshadowing in the work of H.G. Wells to the bright glare of Trinity at Alamogordo and the arms race of the Cold War, this dread invention forever changed the course of human history, and The Making of The Atomic Bomb provides a panoramic backdrop for that story. Richard Rhodes’s ability to craft compelling biographical portraits is matched only by his rigorous scholarship. Told in rich human, political, and scientific detail that any reader can follow, The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a thought-provoking and masterful work.

Download or read book The Atomic West written by Bruce W. Hevly and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Manhattan Project—the World War II race to produce an atomic bomb—transformed the entire country in myriad ways, but it did not affect each region equally. Acting on an enduring perception of the American West as an “empty” place, the U.S. government located a disproportionate number of nuclear facilities—particularly the ones most likely to spread pollution—in western states. The Manhattan Project manufactured plutonium at Hanford, Washington; designed and assembled bombs at Los Alamos, New Mexico; and detonated the world’s first atomic bomb at Alamagordo, New Mexico, on June 16, 1945. In the years that followed the war, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission selected additional western sites for its work. Many westerners initially welcomed the atom. Like federal officials, they, too, regarded their region as “empty,” or underdeveloped. Facilities to make, test, and base atomic weapons, sites to store nuclear waste, and even nuclear power plants were regarded as assets. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, regional attitudes began to change. At a variety of locales, ranging from Eskimo Alaska to Mormon Utah, westerners devoted themselves to resisting the atom and its effects on their environments and communities. Just as the atomic age had dawned in the American West, so its artificial sun began to set there. The Atomic West brings together contributions from several disciplines to explore the impact on the West of the development of atomic power from wartime secrecy and initial postwar enthusiasm to public doubts and protest in the 1970s and 1980s. An impressive example of the benefits of interdisciplinary studies on complex topics, The Atomic West advances our understanding of both regional history and the history of science, and does so with human communities as a significant focal point. The book will be of special interest to students and experts on the American West, environmental history, and the history of science and technology.

Download or read book The Wretched Atom written by Jacob Darwin Hamblin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-03 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking narrative of how the United States offered the promise of nuclear technology to the developing world and its gamble that other nations would use it for peaceful purposes. After the Second World War, the United States offered a new kind of atom that differed from the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This atom would cure diseases, produce new foods, make deserts bloom, and provide abundant energy for all. It was an atom destined for the formerly colonized, recently occupied, and mostly non-white parts of the world that were dubbed the "wretched of the earth" by Frantz Fanon. The "peaceful atom" had so much propaganda potential that President Dwight Eisenhower used it to distract the world from his plan to test even bigger thermonuclear weapons. His scientists said the peaceful atom would quicken the pulse of nature, speeding nations along the path of economic development and helping them to escape the clutches of disease, famine, and energy shortfalls. That promise became one of the most misunderstood political weapons of the twentieth century. It was adopted by every subsequent US president to exert leverage over other nations' weapons programs, to corner world markets of uranium and thorium, and to secure petroleum supplies. Other countries embraced it, building reactors and training experts. Atomic promises were embedded in Japan's postwar recovery, Ghana's pan-Africanism, Israel's quest for survival, Pakistan's brinksmanship with India, and Iran's pursuit of nuclear independence. As The Wretched Atom shows, promoting civilian atomic energy was an immense gamble, and it was never truly peaceful. American promises ended up exporting violence and peace in equal measure. While the United States promised peace and plenty, it planted the seeds of dependency and set in motion the creation of today's expanded nuclear club.

Download or read book Atomic Americans written by Sarah E. Robey and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the dawn of the Atomic Age, Americans encountered troubling new questions brought about by the nuclear revolution: In a representative democracy, who is responsible for national public safety? How do citizens imagine themselves as members of the national collective when faced with the priority of individual survival? What do nuclear weapons mean for transparency and accountability in government? What role should scientific experts occupy within a democratic government? Nuclear weapons created a new arena for debating individual and collective rights. In turn, they threatened to destabilize the very basis of American citizenship. As Sarah E. Robey shows in Atomic Americans, people negotiated the contours of nuclear citizenship through overlapping public discussions about survival. Policymakers and citizens disagreed about the scale of civil defense programs and other public safety measures. As the public learned more about the dangers of nuclear fallout, critics articulated concerns about whether the federal government was operating in its citizens' best interests. By the early 1960s, a significant antinuclear movement had emerged, which ultimately contributed to the 1963 nuclear testing ban. Atomic Americans tells the story of a thoughtful body politic engaged in rewriting the rubric of rights and responsibilities that made up American citizenship in the Atomic Age.

Download or read book Atomic America written by Todd Tucker and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-03-03 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On January 3, 1961, nuclear reactor SL-1 exploded in rural Idaho, spreading radioactive contamination over thousands of acres and killing three men: John Byrnes, Richard McKinley, and Richard Legg. The Army blamed "human error" and a sordid love triangle. Though it has been overshadowed by the accident at Three Mile Island, SL-1 is the only fatal nuclear reactor incident in American history, and it holds serious lessons for a nation poised to embrace nuclear energy once again. Historian Todd Tucker, who first heard the rumors about the Idaho Falls explosion as a trainee in the Navy's nuclear program, suspected there was more to the accident than the rumors suggested. Poring over hundreds of pages of primary sources and interviewing the surviving players led him to a tale of shocking negligence and subterfuge. The Army and its contractors had deliberately obscured the true causes of this terrible accident, the result of poor engineering as much as uncontrolled passions. A bigger story opened up before him about the frantic race for nuclear power among the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force -- a race that started almost the moment the nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS), where the meltdown occurred, had been a proving ground where engineers, generals, and admirals attempted to make real the Atomic Age dream of unlimited power. Some of their most ambitious plans bore fruit -- like that of the nation's unofficial nuclear patriarch, Admiral Rickover, whose "true submarine," the USS Nautilus, would forever change naval warfare. Others, like the Air Force's billion dollar quest for a nuclear-powered airplane, never came close. The Army's ultimate goal was to construct small, portable reactors to power the Arctic bases that functioned as sentinels against a Soviet sneak attack. At the height of its program, the Army actually constructed a nuclear powered city inside a glacier in Greenland. But with the meltdown in Idaho came the end of the Army's program and the beginning of the Navy's longstanding monopoly on military nuclear power. The dream of miniaturized, portable nuclear plants died with McKinley, Legg, and Byrnes. The demand for clean energy has revived the American nuclear power industry. Chronic instability in the Middle East and fears of global warming have united an unlikely coalition of conservative isolationists and fretful environmentalists, all of whom are fighting for a buildup of the emission-free power source that is already quietly responsible for nearly 20 percent of the American energy supply. More than a hundred nuclear plants generate electricity in the United States today. Thirty-two new reactors are planned. All are descendants of SL-1. With so many plants in operation, and so many more on the way, it is vitally important to examine the dangers of poor design, poor management, and the idea that a nuclear power plant can be inherently safe. Tucker sets the record straight in this fast-paced narrative history, advocating caution and accountability in harnessing this feared power source.

Download or read book By the Bomb s Early Light written by Paul S. Boyer and published by Pantheon Books. This book was released on 1985 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1985, By the Bomb's Early Light is the first book to explore the cultural "fallout" in America during the early years of the atomic age. The book is based on a wide range of sources, including cartoons, opinion polls, radio programs, movies, literature, song lyrics, slang, and interviews with leading opinion-makers of the time. Through these materials, Boyer shows the surprising and profoundly disturbing ways in which the bomb quickly and totally penetrated the fabric of American life, from the chillingly prophetic forecasts of observers like Lewis Mumford to the Hollywood starlet who launched her career as the "anatomic bomb". In a new preface, Boyer discusses recent changes in nuclear politics and attitudes toward the nuclear age.

Download or read book Historical Encyclopedia of Atomic Energy written by Stephen E. Atkins and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 2000-01-30 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each entry concludes with a suggested reading. The encyclopedia includes a timeline of important events in the global development of atomic energy, more than 30 photos, and a selected general bibliography."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Atoms for Power written by American Assembly and published by . This book was released on 1957 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The New World a History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission AEC Volume 1 1939 to 1946 the Race for the Atomic Bomb Uranium 235 Plutonium Controlling the Bomb After World War II written by Atomic Energy Commission and published by . This book was released on 2017-12-11 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the highly regarded official history of the birth of the atomic age and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The foreword states: No other development in our lifetime has been fraught with such consequences for good or evil as has atomic fission. None has raised such challenging questions for the historian, the economist, the armed forces, the scientists and the engineers. The wartime scientific developments produced significant new techniques in public administration which came to be more widely used after the war, such as the enlistment of university and private contractors to perform new types of government activities. The fresh light this volume throws on the early history of these new techniques may prove helpful in clarifying current problems of conflict of interest in the "military-industrial complex." Unlike the history of the proximity fuze the development of atomic weapons was an international achievement to which great contributions were made by European as well as American scientists and engineers. All were spurred by the agonizing fear that the Nazis were well ahead of the free world in the development of atomic weapons.CHAPTER 1 - THE INHERITANCE * CHAPTER 2 - IN THE BEGINNING * Discovery of fission; first efforts to gain federal support for nuclear research; growing interest in military potential; all-out investigation of atomic weapons * CHAPTER 3 - EXPLORING THE ROUTES TO THE WEAPON * OSRD efforts to select best production process; expand project 1942 * CHAPTER 4 - COMMITMENT * Decisions leading to the report committing the United States to producing bomb * CHAPTER 5 - RACE FOR THE BOMB: URANIUM 235 * Construction of Oak Ridge; evolution of isotope-separation plants from research through design, development, construction * CHAPTER 6 - RACE FOR THE BOMB: PLUTONIUM * Evolution of the Oak Ridge and Hanford piles and separation plants; selection of Hanford site and construction of plant. * CHAPTER 7 - LABORATORY SET ON A HILL * Selection of the Los Alamos site; organization of weapons laboratory; research and development; implosion and gun; crisis in 1944 * CHAPTER 8 - UNEASY PARTNERSHIP * Problems of the Anglo-American alliance; end of interchange; Churchill's efforts to achieve a completely joint enterprise; Quebec Agreement, resumption of interchange. * CHAPTER 9 - RACE FOR THE BOMB: HOMESTRETCH * Congress and appropriations; procurement of ore and uranium supplies; completing the. production plants and initial operation, 1944-45; final development of weapon. * CHAPTER 10 - THE QUEST FOR POSTWAR PLANNING * Bush-Conant interest in postwar control; Metallurgical Laboratory concern for the future; Roosevelt, Churchill, Hyde Park Aide-Memoire; Britain and the French scientists; Stimson's last advice to Roosevelt * CHAPTER 11 - TERRIBLE SWIFT SWORD * Atomic bombs in the strategy against Japan; sessions of the Interim Committee; scientific opinion and the Scientific Panel; Alamogordo; Potsdam; victory over Japan. * CHAPTER 12 - CONTROLLING THE ATOM: SEARCH FOR A POLICY * Atomic energy in the public forum; Stimson's search for a policy for international control; Army pressure for legislation * CHAPTER 13 - CONTROLLING THE ATOM: FROM POLICY TO ACTION * Rise of the scientists' opposition; McMahon's Special Committee; Army-McMahon dispute; indecision on international control; Truman-Attlee-King conference * CHAPTER 14 - LEGISLATIVE BATTLE * Vandenberg amendment and civilian control; passage of Atomic Energy Act * CHAPTER 15 - INTERNATIONAL CONTROL: LAST BEST HOPE * UN Atomic Energy Commission; drafting the Acheson-Lilienthal plan; Baruch's appointment as U. S. representative * CHAPTER 16 - INTERNATIONAL CONTROL: NO FLESH FOR THE SPIRIT * Bikini test; reactions to the U. S. proposal; explanations of American plan; stalemate with Russians; Wallace controversy * CHAPTER 17 - TIME OF TRANSITION * Appointment of U. S. AEC; Army management of Manhattan project in 1946

Download or read book Trinity A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb written by Jonathan Fetter-Vorm and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2023-11-14 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trinity, the debut graphic book by Jonathan Fetter-Vorm, depicts the dramatic history of the race to build and the decision to drop the first atomic bomb in World War Two—with a focus on the brilliant, enigmatic scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer. "Succeeds as both a graphic primer and a philosophical meditation." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) This sweeping historical narrative traces the spark of invention from the laboratories of nineteenth-century Europe to the massive industrial and scientific efforts of the Manhattan Project, and even transports the reader into a nuclear reaction—into the splitting atoms themselves. The power of the atom was harnessed in a top-secret government compound in Los Alamos, New Mexico, by a group of brilliant scientists led by the enigmatic wunderkind J. Robert Oppenheimer. Focused from the start on the monumentally difficult task of building an atomic weapon, these men and women soon began to wrestle with the moral implications of actually succeeding. When they detonated the first bomb at a test site code-named Trinity, they recognized that they had irreversibly thrust the world into a new and terrifying age. With powerful renderings of WWII's catastrophic events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Fetter-Vorm unflinchingly chronicles the far-reaching political, environmental, and psychological effects of this new invention. Informative and thought-provoking, Trinity is the ideal introduction to one of the most significant events in history.

Download or read book The American Atom written by Philip L. Cantelon and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For this edition (first in 1984), the editors have updated the collection of primary documents which tell the story of atomic energy in the US from the discovery of fission through the development of nuclear weapons, international proliferation, and attempts at control. The book also includes a new chapter, reflects on Chernoyl, Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book Our First Atom Bomb written by Frederick Borsch and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2009-11-19 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What could it have been like to press the switch that dropped the worlds first atomic bomb? What might have been going through the head of the All-American young man who had that responsibility on the Enola Gay? Complete with interviews with people like Colonel Paul Tibbets and those who knew Curtis LeMay and Tokyo Rose, this re-creation tells of the entire six hours that the mission took, from take-off at Tinian to that awesome moment over Hiroshima. From an interview with Dr. Theodore McCluskey S.J.: I try to imagine being in his front seat position. Can you imagine putting anyone into that position? Making any human being responsible for that? Such power over death and life? No wonder he was mixed up. No wonder he wanted to think up a plan B, or, how did he put it?to try to reshuffle the cards. I can understand why you and he would want to imagine things differently. Imagination is needed if we are going to see other possibilities in time of war.

Download or read book Longing for the Bomb written by Lindsey A. Freeman and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-04-13 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longing for the Bomb traces the unusual story of the first atomic city and the emergence of American nuclear culture. Tucked into the folds of Appalachia and kept off all commercial maps, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was created for the Manhattan Project by the U.S. government in the 1940s. Its workers labored at a breakneck pace, most aware only that their jobs were helping "the war effort." The city has experienced the entire lifespan of the Atomic Age, from the fevered wartime enrichment of the uranium that fueled Little Boy, through a brief period of atomic utopianism after World War II when it began to brand itself as "The Atomic City," to the anxieties of the Cold War, to the contradictory contemporary period of nuclear unease and atomic nostalgia. Oak Ridge's story deepens our understanding of the complex relationship between America and its bombs. Blending historiography and ethnography, Lindsey Freeman shows how a once-secret city is visibly caught in an uncertain present, no longer what it was historically yet still clinging to the hope of a nuclear future. It is a place where history, memory, and myth compete and conspire to tell the story of America's atomic past and to explain the nuclear present.