Longing for the bomb : Oak Ridge and atomic nostalgia / Lindsey A. Freeman.

Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2015]©2015

Freeman, Lindsey A. author.

01-01-2015

xv, 234 pages ; 24 cm.

text

volume

355.8 FRE (Copy 1) GFL-MONO 302812 INLIBRARY

United States

Atomic bombs

History

Overseas item

Official secrets -- United States -- History -- 20th century.

Atomic bomb -- Social aspects -- United States -- History.

World War, 1939-1945 -- Tennessee -- Oak Ridge.

Popular culture -- United States -- History -- 20th century.

Oak Ridge (Tenn.) -- History -- 20th century.

Oak Ridge (Tenn.) -- Social life and customs -- 20th century.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory -- History -- 20th century.

Manhattan Project (U.S.) -- History.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

9781469622378

"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"--

Prologue -- Introduction -- The atomic prophecy -- Brahms and bombs on the atomic frontier -- At work in the atomic beehive -- We didn't exactly live in a democracy -- From Hiroshima to normalization -- Happy memories under the mushroom cloud -- Manhattan Project time machine -- Atomic snapshots -- Longing for the bomb.

1069354

302812

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