Romancing the Atom: Nuclear Infatuation from the Radium Girls to Fukushima

by Robert R. Johnson

In 1945, Albert Einstein said, "The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind." This statement seems more valid today than ever. Romancing the Nuclear Infatuation from the Radium Girls to Fukushima presents compelling moments that clearly depict the folly and shortsightedness of our "atomic mindset" and shed light upon current issues of nuclear power, waste disposal, and weapons development.

The book consists of ten nonfiction historical vignettes, including the women radium dial painters of the 1920s, the expulsion of the Bikini Island residents to create a massive "petri dish" for post-World War II bomb and radiation testing, the government-subsidized uranium rush of the 1950s and its effects on Native American communities, and the secret radioactive material development facilities in residential neighborhoods. In addition, the book includes original interviews of prominent historians, writers, and private citizens involved with these poignant stories.


More information is available online at romancingtheatom.com.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, History

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Sean Kottke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over dinner with the author last month, I was intrigued and alarmed by his account of the "secret history of Oxford, Ohio," most famous as the home of Miami University of Ohio: a uranium mining cottage industry in a residential neighborhood. That story forms the core vignette of this eyebrow-raising account of the impact of atomic power on life in the 20th century, from the scarring of the earth via open-air nuclear tests to the appearance of radioactive substances in pop culture consumables. The story of the poisoning of a neighborhood in Oxford by the work of the Alba Craft Shop, where uranium was refined and shaped into usable forms on basic machine shop tools with no special precautions, is as powerful and frightening a story of a perfect storm of preventable environmental poisoning as Michigan's BPP poisoning in the '70s and the current day Flint water crisis.

[Olivia Waite · Rating 3 out of 5]

Episodic and anecdotal, just like the title promises -- scenes were depicted vividly and with telling details and strong emotional content, and I appreciated that the complicated politics of nuclear development (Indian lands and mineral rights, worker safety, issues of transparency and national security) were robustly presented. The science stayed mostly in the background, so if you're new to researching atomic history you might want to start somewhere else (like the underrated Before The Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima.

[Fishface · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read, but not exactly what I thought it would be -- instead of a survey of changing public attitudes towards nuclear energy and weapons, this book proved to be about the many ways the technology has proved to be dangerous and not worth the cost of producing. Lots of citations in here that will lead you to other useful reading on the subject.