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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.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
The Atomic West: Region and Nation, 1942-1992 - Bruce Hevly and John Findlay
I. BUILDING A FEDERAL PRESENCE
Grand Coulee and Hanford: The Atomic Bomb and the Development of the Columbia River - Robert 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
II. THE ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION AT WORK
The University of California, the Federal Weapons Labs, and the Founding of the Atomic West - Greg Herken
James L. Tuck: Scientific Polymath and Eternal Optimist of the Atomic West - Ferenc Szasz
"Hotter Than a $2 Pistol": Fallout, Sheep, and the Atomic Energy Commission, 1953-1986 - Barton Hacker
III. LOCAL RESISTANCE
Alaska and the Frecracker 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
Contributors
Index
About the author
Edited by Bruce W. Hevly and John M. Findlay
