1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910816954203321

Autore

Freeman Lindsey A

Titolo

Longing for the Bomb : Oak Ridge and Atomic Nostalgia / / Lindsey A. Freeman

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chapel Hill : , : The University of North Carolina Press, , [2015]

Baltimore, Md. : , : Project MUSE, , 2015

©[2015]

ISBN

979-88-908458-0-1

1-4696-2317-X

Edizione

[First edition.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (253 p.)

Disciplina

355.8/25119097309044

355.825119097309044

Soggetti

Popular culture - United States - History - 20th century

World War, 1939-1945 - Tennessee - Oak Ridge

Atomic bomb - Social aspects - United States - History

Official secrets - United States - History - 20th century

Electronic books.

Oak Ridge (Tenn.) Social life and customs 20th century

Oak Ridge (Tenn.) History 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Prologue -- Introduction -- The atomic prophecy -- Brahms and bombs on the atomic frontier -- At work in the atomic beehive -- We didn't exactly live in a democracy -- From Hiroshima to normalization -- Happy memories under the mushroom cloud -- Manhattan Project time machine -- Atomic snapshots -- Longing for the bomb.

Sommario/riassunto

"Longing for the Bomb traces the unusual story of the first atomic city and the emergence of American nuclear culture. Tucked into the folds of Appalachia and kept off all commercial maps, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was created for the Manhattan Project by the U.S. government in the 1940s. Its workers labored at a breakneck pace, most aware only that their jobs were helping 'the war effort.' The city has experienced the entire lifespan of the Atomic Age, from the fevered wartime enrichment



of the uranium that fueled Little Boy, through a brief period of atomic utopianism after World War II when it began to brand itself as 'The Atomic City,' to the anxieties of the Cold War, to the contradictory contemporary period of nuclear unease and atomic nostalgia. Oak Ridge's story deepens our understanding of the complex relationship between America and its bombs. Blending historiography and ethnography, Lindsey Freeman shows how a once-secret city is visibly caught in an uncertain present, no longer what it was historically yet still clinging to the hope of a nuclear future. It is a place where history, memory, and myth compete and conspire to tell the story of America's atomic past and to explain the nuclear present"--