Nuclear Fear: A History of Images

by Spencer R. Weart

Book Overview

Our thinking is inhabited by images-images of sometimes curious and overwhelming power. The mushroom cloud, weird rays that can transform the flesh, the twilight world following a nuclear war, the white city of the future, the brilliant but mad scientist who plots to destroy the world-all these images and more relate to nuclear energy, but that is not their only common bond. Decades before the first atom bomb exploded, a web of symbols with surprising...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674628357
• ISBN13: 9780674628359
• Release Date: May 1988
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 544 Pages
• Weight: 2.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.7" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

first rate

Combines the history of science, popular culture, and politics seamlessly. Weart writes with stunning clarity and zero pretentiousness. My only complaint concerns the title: this book is about so much more than fear. It's also about the outsized hopes and bizarre expectations surrounding all things "atomic" from the discovery of radium to the last decade of the cold war.

A fascinating, even-handed account

Weart's Nuclear Fear offers a history of nuclear energy viewed through the lens of popular mythology, discussing how images, fears, and fantasies as old as humanity have shaped both public and expert perceptions of the atomic age. The history of nuclear energy is charged with strongly-held convictions and value-laden analyses. Amid this conflagration, it's reassuring to find an account that not only approaches the issue from a unique and fascinating perspective, but does so in an even-handed way. Weart delivers on both these counts, staying the course of reasoned analyses, dispassionate as can be demanded of any account which must necessarily dive elbow deep into the discussion of subjective human values. I have a specific fascination with representations of nuclear technology in popular culture. In that capacity this book is everything I could have hoped for in a secondary source. Nuclear history has precious few scholarly discussions of the avenues by which such a powerful psychological image is manifested in a wider cultural context, and as a definitive account, one could ask for no better than Weart's. This book's only shortcoming is one for which the author can't be blamed: the publication date. The end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union add yet another dimension to the discussion. Nuclear fear is alive and well today; and it has no doubt taken some interesting twists and turns since the late 80s. This is a must-read for any student of nuclear energy or weaponry, if only because if offers such a fresh perspective. The histories of the subject's political and scientific components are well-explored, but Weart makes a compelling case that these avenues are by no means exhaustive.

Pro-Fission Electricity Global Environmentalists Must Read!

The French say "electricite de la fission," fission electricity! Never say "nuclear power" again! Spencer explains how that political phrase commands a veritable anti-fission electric inquistion in the US. The Evil "Environmental" Inquistion in the US was opposed on this issue by all the countries at the 1997 U.N. global warming conference in Kyoto, Japan. Network with me, Joady Guthrie at jguthrie@lmi.net, San Francisoco, California, to overthrow the Environmental Establishment in the US today; you and I can win this war on warming together. - JG

Brilliant. Original. Very scarry. A must.

If you are like me, you have a pile of books that you keep meaning to get around to, and, due to time constraints, rarely do. This book is the exception-read it now. It is quite possibly one of the most original books of this past quarter century. Weart is the first historian I know of who directs his attention to the pervasiveness of nuclear imagery in our lives. If you ever did the 'under your desks dears, an atom bomb might be coming' drill in grade school. you need to read this. If you have kids, you must read this. Not an easy book, but all the more rewarding. Very powerful stuff, indeed.