Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
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 July 16, 1945. In the years that followed the war, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission continued to select western sites for its work.
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 post-war enthusiasm to public doubts and protest in the 1970s and 1980s. An impressive example of the benefits of inter-disciplinary 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.
Table of Contents
Atomic West : region and nation, 1942-1992 /Bruce Hevly and John M. Findlay --Grand Coulee and Hanford : the atomic bomb and the development of the Columbia River /Robert E. Ficken --General Groves and the atomic West : the making and meaning of Hanford /Stanley Goldberg --Building the atomic cities : Richland, Los Alamos, and the American planning language /Carl Abbott --University of California, the federal weapons labs, and the founding of the atomic West /Gregg Herken --James L. Tuck : scientific polymath and eternal optimist of the atomic West /Ferenc M. Szasz --"Hotter than a $2 pistol" : fallout, sheep, and the Atomic Energy Commission, 1953-1986 /Barton C. Hacker --Alaska and the firecracker boys : the story of project Chariot /Dan O'Neill --Radical initiatives and moderate alternatives : California's 1976 nuclear safeguards initiative /Thomas Wellock --Antinuclear activism in the Pacific Northwest : WPPSS and its enemies /Daniel Pope --Air Force, western Shoshone, and Mormon rhetoric of place and the MX conflict /Matthew Glass.