Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford Nuclear Age Series) - Softcover

Wittner, Lawrence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804756325 ISBN 13: 9780804756327

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Confronting the Bomb tells the dramatic, inspiring story of how citizen activism helped curb the nuclear arms race and prevent nuclear war. This abbreviated version of Lawrence Wittner's award-winning trilogy, The Struggle Against the Bomb, shows how a worldwide, grassroots campaign―the largest social movement of modern times―challenged the nuclear priorities of the great powers and, ultimately, thwarted their nuclear ambitions. Based on massive research in the files of peace and disarmament organizations and in formerly top secret government records, extensive interviews with antinuclear activists and government officials, and memoirs and other published materials, Confronting the Bomb opens a unique window on one of the most important issues of the modern era: survival in the nuclear age. It covers the entire period of significant opposition to the bomb, from the final stages of the Second World War up to the present. Along the way, it provides fascinating glimpses of the interaction of key nuclear disarmament activists and policymakers, including Albert Einstein, Harry Truman, Albert Schweitzer, Norman Cousins, Nikita Khrushchev, Bertrand Russell, Andrei Sakharov, Linus Pauling, Dwight Eisenhower, Harold Macmillan, John F. Kennedy, Randy Forsberg, Mikhail Gorbachev, Helen Caldicott, E.P. Thompson, and Ronald Reagan. Overall, however, it is a story of popular mobilization and its effectiveness.

About this title

About the Author:

Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History emeritus at the State University of New York, Albany, and a former president of the Peace History Society. He is the author of a scholarly trilogy, published by Stanford University Press -- The Struggle Against the Bomb: One World or None (1993), Resisting the Bomb (1997), and Toward Nuclear Abolition (2003) -- that provides the basis for Confronting the Bomb. A recipient of numerous awards, he is the author or editor of twelve books, the writer of hundreds of published articles and book reviews, and a guest lecturer in many nations. He has also been an active participant in the peace, racial equality, and labor movements and currently serves as a national board member of Peace Action and as executive secretary of the Albany County Central Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO.  His latest book, an autobiography, is published by the University of Tennessee Press and is entitled:  Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual (2012).

Review:

"Confronting the Bomb is a magnificent and engaging history of one of the most important movements in the past eighty years--the movement for the abolition of nuclear weapons. . . .  Its ebbs and flows, victories and defeats, strengths and shortcomings, are all described with skill and passion."--Peace Magazine

"This book tells the remarkable story of how the antinuclear movement . . . fought against the advent, proliferation and use of nuclear weapons. . . . [It] is a must-read."--Journal of Peace Research

About this edition

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0804756325
• ISBN 13: 9780804756327
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272