One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture - Hardcover

Rose, Kenneth D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814775225 ISBN 13: 9780814775226

Publisher: NYU Press, 2001

Synopsis

For the half-century duration of the Cold War, the fallout shelter was a curiously American preoccupation. Triggered in 1961 by a hawkish speech by John F. Kennedy, the fallout shelter controversy—"to dig or not to dig," as Business Week put it at the time—forced many Americans to grapple with deeply disturbing dilemmas that went to the very heart of their self-image about what it meant to be an American, an upstanding citizen, and a moral human being.
Given the much-touted nuclear threat throughout the 1960s and the fact that 4 out of 5 Americans expressed a preference for nuclear war over living under communism, what's perhaps most striking is how few American actually built backyard shelters. Tracing the ways in which the fallout shelter became an icon of popular culture, Kenneth D. Rose also investigates the troubling issues the shelters raised: Would a post-war world even be worth living in? Would shelter construction send the Soviets a message of national resolve, or rather encourage political and military leaders to think in terms of a "winnable" war?
Investigating the role of schools, television, government bureaucracies, civil defense, and literature, and rich in fascinating detail—including a detailed tour of the vast fallout shelter in Greenbriar, Virginia, built to harbor the entire United States Congress in the event of nuclear armageddon—One Nation, Underground goes to the very heart of America's Cold War experience.

About this title

Book Description:

A look at the fall-out shelters and how they reflected American anxieties and hopes during the 1950's and 60's.

About the Author:

Kenneth D. Rose teaches at California State University and is author of American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition.

About this edition

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0814775225
• ISBN 13: 9780814775226
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368