Description
Book SynopsisAt 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, critic
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Wars to Come
1. Stop "Play[ing] Pattycake with the Whole Issue": Citizen Calls for Civil Defense
2. "Between the Devil and the Deep": Civil Defense and the Early Cold War Political Landscape
3. The Man in the White Lab Coat: The Uses of Scientists and Scientific Authority
4. The Fallout from Fallout: The Peacetime Threat
5. Atomic America: The Expert Public and Nuclear Dissent
Conclusion: Renouncing the Nuclear in Nuclear Citizenship
