The Myths of August: A Personal Exploration of Our Tragic Cold War Affair with the Atom - Hardcover

Udall, Stewart L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679433643 ISBN 13: 9780679433644

Publisher: Pantheon, 1994

Synopsis

The former Secretary of the Interior provides a provocative expose+a7 of America's Cold War atomic policy, discussing the government's disregard for the devastating impact of atomic testing and uranium mining on individuals exposed to radiation. 17,500 first printing.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

In an openly partisan book, the former congressman and secretary of the interior attacks those he deems responsible for wars both hot and cold, for misguided foreign policies, and for out-and-out lies and cover-ups. Although the book closes with a vision of America restored to an open democracy, with no secret or elite forces beyond the law and with widened cultural tolerance, those are virtually the only words of cheer in a text otherwise devoted to lamentation. Fully the first third inveighs against the Manhattan Project; Udall takes General Leslie Groves as his villain and asserts that developing the atom bomb was unnecessary, since the military knew all along that Germany could not and would not develop one. But he fails to take into account the fact that the scientists gathered in Los Alamos were not in a race so much as engaged in an intellectual effort to see if it was possible to make a bomb at all--an effort that had a momentum independent of military considerations. Udall is more convincing when he takes to task the government's denial of the role played by fallout from atmospheric tests or exposure to radiation in causing death and injury to human and animal life. Here he cites substantive evidence to expose the callous, immoral behavior of lawyers and judges who denied fault and even attributed lung cancer deaths among uranium mine workers to cigarettes (the miners didn't smoke). Finally, Udall reviews the Cold War and the success of the military-industrial complex in exploiting the myths of bomb and missile gaps. Chief villains this time around are Edward Teller, Joseph Stalin, and, most recently, Ronald Reagan. Clearly Udall is on safe ground here with lots of slow-moving targets. Unfortunately, having vented so much spleen on the bad guys, he has little space left for a positive message. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

Above-ground nuclear bomb tests in Nevada after WW II made human guinea pigs of civilians living downwind in several western states, as later revealed by thousands of cases of radiation-induced cancer, childhood leukemia, burns and birth defects. In an expose of the government's decades-long policy of public deception concerning the hazards of radiation, Udall, secretary of the interior under JFK and LBJ and a former congressman from Arizona, condemns the U.S. nuclear testing program as a violation of the Nuremberg Code. He also describes his protracted struggle as a lawyer, beginning in 1979, representing the widows of Navajo uranium miners who developed cancer. Myths sustained by Cold War military competition have warped our national ethos, contends Udall. Disputing the popular belief that Manhattan Project scientists were locked in a desperate race against the Nazis, he summarizes evidence that Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Manhattan Project manager General Leslie Groves had ample indication that Hitler was not rushing to build an atomic bomb. In Udall's analysis, Stimson played the crucial role in the decision to incinerate Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a decision rubber-stamped by President Truman, whose advisers never presented to him the full range of war-ending options. The atomic bomb's existence, Udall maintains, may have even prolonged the war by influencing Stimson and Truman to ignore an opportunity to negotiate a Japanese surrender in May or June 1945. Udall ends this indictment by calling for a drastic reduction in government secrecy justified in the name of national security, an end to the continuing arms race and a redeployment of resources toward sustainable domestic and Third World development. (June) *PAPERBACKS
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0679433643
• ISBN 13: 9780679433644
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 399