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Snake Dance: Journeys Beneath a Nuclear Sky
In this unique journey across continents and centuries, award-winning author Patrick Marnham explores the ruthless dictators, dangerous minds and prehistoric precedents behind the development of nuclear power.
The terrifying, awe-inspiring first use of nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was the most controversial act of warfare in human history, dramatically ending the Second World War but ushering in an uncertain new age. Yet it was also the culmination of a story that extends beyond Japan and Washington, and well beyond the 1940 decades of personal sacrifice, centuries of colonial exploitation and millennia of primitive legend.
In Snake Dance , Patrick Marnham traces this complex story, travelling from the opulent nineteenth-century palaces of King Leopold II of Belgium, built with riches plundered from the Congo, to the dangerously derelict nuclear reactor of modern-day Kinshasa, where an upturned ice-cream tub protects the activation button. He follows the classified shipment of Congolese uranium to the deserts of New Mexico -- where Native Americans had for thousands of years practised ritualistic 'snake dances' in an attempt to harness lightning -- for the Manhattan Project's secret test detonation. Here he uncovers the lives and legacies of Robert Oppenheimer and Aby Warburg, two 'mad geniuses' who confronted the devastating power of twentieth-century science in very different ways.
Spanning the globe and the history of human civilisation, Snake Dance is at once an intrepid intellectual adventure and a wake-up call for as he returns full-circle to Japan, this time the catastrophe at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant in March 2011, Marnham questions whether we have learned anything at all from our hubristic experiments with nature.
The terrifying, awe-inspiring first use of nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was the most controversial act of warfare in human history, dramatically ending the Second World War but ushering in an uncertain new age. Yet it was also the culmination of a story that extends beyond Japan and Washington, and well beyond the 1940 decades of personal sacrifice, centuries of colonial exploitation and millennia of primitive legend.
In Snake Dance , Patrick Marnham traces this complex story, travelling from the opulent nineteenth-century palaces of King Leopold II of Belgium, built with riches plundered from the Congo, to the dangerously derelict nuclear reactor of modern-day Kinshasa, where an upturned ice-cream tub protects the activation button. He follows the classified shipment of Congolese uranium to the deserts of New Mexico -- where Native Americans had for thousands of years practised ritualistic 'snake dances' in an attempt to harness lightning -- for the Manhattan Project's secret test detonation. Here he uncovers the lives and legacies of Robert Oppenheimer and Aby Warburg, two 'mad geniuses' who confronted the devastating power of twentieth-century science in very different ways.
Spanning the globe and the history of human civilisation, Snake Dance is at once an intrepid intellectual adventure and a wake-up call for as he returns full-circle to Japan, this time the catastrophe at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant in March 2011, Marnham questions whether we have learned anything at all from our hubristic experiments with nature.
- GenresNonfictionTravel
352 pages, Hardcover
First published November 7, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 24, 2015
This is a fascinating exploration of the landscapes and personalities associated both directly and (sometimes very remotely) with the genesis and exploitation of the first atomic bombs. Part travelogue and part history, this book never ceases to be exceedingly interesting.
February 8, 2019
The book ends in Fukushima, surveying the apocalyptic landscape left behind after the Tsunami and the subsequent radiation damage from the nuclear power plant. There’s an astonishing beauty, it seems, in the areas vacated by human life. “An additional Arcadian charm,” in hill country with little streams and orchards. Wildlife is flourishing, though there is already evidence of mutation in the blue butterflies that remain in the area after all the human inhabitants have left or died…
I visited Trinity site in April 2018, it is located in the White Sands missile range, and only opens to the public for two days a year. There is little in terms of a monument, indeed there is “nothing” there, though they’ve put a fence around the breathtaking nothing, and if you look closely at the ground you do begin to see everywhere the little bits of radioactive green glass, trinitite.
And so is the story that Marnham weaves here—expansive landscapes that when you look closer you see more and more telling details, you see that everything is infected, poisoned. It’s not a fatalistic story, though perhaps it is… need to think it through more. But it did dispel some assumptions I had had about Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project in general. You see nuanced but ultimately cunning characters—men—that certainly knew better than to fuck with Pandora’s Box but opened it anyway. My hackles started to go up from early in the book when I saw that there were practically no female stories or voices included in the telling of this story. But then I realized that this is anyway a series of avoidable catastrophes wrought by men.
I visited Trinity site in April 2018, it is located in the White Sands missile range, and only opens to the public for two days a year. There is little in terms of a monument, indeed there is “nothing” there, though they’ve put a fence around the breathtaking nothing, and if you look closely at the ground you do begin to see everywhere the little bits of radioactive green glass, trinitite.
And so is the story that Marnham weaves here—expansive landscapes that when you look closer you see more and more telling details, you see that everything is infected, poisoned. It’s not a fatalistic story, though perhaps it is… need to think it through more. But it did dispel some assumptions I had had about Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project in general. You see nuanced but ultimately cunning characters—men—that certainly knew better than to fuck with Pandora’s Box but opened it anyway. My hackles started to go up from early in the book when I saw that there were practically no female stories or voices included in the telling of this story. But then I realized that this is anyway a series of avoidable catastrophes wrought by men.
August 14, 2021
“Schlangentanz“ zieht einen großen Bogen über die Geschichte der Atomkraft, bzw der Atombombe. Marnham beginnt seine Archäologie des Nuklearzeitalters im kolonialen Kongo.
Das dort abgebaute Uran wird später die Grundlage für die Atombombenabwürfe auf Hiroshima und Nagasaki bilden.
Das Buch springt weit zurück. Alle wichtigen Gestalten werden erwähnt: Marie Curie, Oppenheimer, etc.
Die brutale Ausbeutung indigener Völker für den Uranbergbau ermöglicht es den Industriestaaten günstig Atomkraft zu nutzen.
“Schlangentanz“ ist spannend geschrieben, voller kurioser Fakten. Da ist z.b der erste afrikanische Pannen-AKW im Kongo, in dem die Brenstäbe mit einer herkömmlichen Angel gewechselt werden und die Schlüssel für das Kraftwerk regelmäßig verloren gehen.
Da bleibt einem beim Lesen, das Lachen im Munde stecken.
Mit der Erschaffung der Atomkraft hat der Mensch eine Technologie geschaffen, welche sich nicht beherrschen lässt. Die Zerstörungskraft der Kernwaffen und Jahrtausende währende Strahlung des Abfalls sind unlösbare Probleme für unsere Gesellschaft.
Die Menschen haben hierbei den Bock zum Gärtner gemacht; die Atomlobby kontrolliert sich selbst.
Das dort abgebaute Uran wird später die Grundlage für die Atombombenabwürfe auf Hiroshima und Nagasaki bilden.
Das Buch springt weit zurück. Alle wichtigen Gestalten werden erwähnt: Marie Curie, Oppenheimer, etc.
Die brutale Ausbeutung indigener Völker für den Uranbergbau ermöglicht es den Industriestaaten günstig Atomkraft zu nutzen.
“Schlangentanz“ ist spannend geschrieben, voller kurioser Fakten. Da ist z.b der erste afrikanische Pannen-AKW im Kongo, in dem die Brenstäbe mit einer herkömmlichen Angel gewechselt werden und die Schlüssel für das Kraftwerk regelmäßig verloren gehen.
Da bleibt einem beim Lesen, das Lachen im Munde stecken.
Mit der Erschaffung der Atomkraft hat der Mensch eine Technologie geschaffen, welche sich nicht beherrschen lässt. Die Zerstörungskraft der Kernwaffen und Jahrtausende währende Strahlung des Abfalls sind unlösbare Probleme für unsere Gesellschaft.
Die Menschen haben hierbei den Bock zum Gärtner gemacht; die Atomlobby kontrolliert sich selbst.
April 2, 2020
Some parts were interesting especially the eccentric cast of characters. However, some of it was long winded and other parts somewhat more disconnected. Interesting concept, but it took me awhile to plow through it.
March 30, 2022
Awful. Meandering, with very little relationship to anything. Gave up after 100 pages
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November 9, 2014Intriguing but uneven book. Its topic is the genesis of the atomic bomb and Marnham follows different paths that presumably lead to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The profile of Aby Warburg who did ethnographic work on Indians in New Mexico seems a reach in this regard. There are several research trips the author takes that are seeming dead ends: a trip to the Congan jungle and an old uranium mine and unsuccessful efforts to make contact with Robert Oppenheimer's son. The book is good on the development of the Manhattan Project but still doesn't quite prove the author's contention that US military was in control of the bomb's destiny not politicians. A last chapter involves a visit to Fukushima Japan after the earthquake and nuclear accident of 2011.
October 29, 2015
The author wrote about the connections of Congo's rich reserves of Uranium to the birth of the first atomic bomb. While a good part of the book does not interest me - the author elaboration of the tribes in New Mexico and the life story of some explorers who visited New Mexico, the author does give a detailed account of how the Uranium was transported to the US and the bureaucratic process of creating the first atomic bomb, as well as the various scientific discoveries leading up to the formation of the bomb. Author gives brief mention to the Nazi's project on the atomic bomb which was eventually abandoned. There is a story about the fateful day the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and the implications of nuclear energy as seen in Fukushima.
April 28, 2015
I am not sure how to classify this book. It is a travelogue that covers uranium mines in the Congo, the development of the atomic bomb in New Mexico, using Congo uranium, the dropping of the two bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and it wraps up in Japan in 2011 after the Fukishima disaster. It uses Conrad's The Heart Of Darkness as an outline, and mixes in a number of statements, facts, and opinions all along the way. With all that it is still a fascinating book, well worth tracking down a copy.
March 26, 2017
History and the development of the atomic bomb;
Congo - uranium
Mexico - testing - US & Japan.
OK
Congo - uranium
Mexico - testing - US & Japan.
OK
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews