Frenchman Flat: The Rise and Fall of Atomic Bombs

by Jon Else

A timely book for unstable times, Frenchman Flat recounts the science, politics, and human experience of those who developed nuclear weapons, suffered the consequences of their testing, and fought for and against arms control between the 1940s and 1990s. The throughline of this vast, complex story is a thirty-seven-kiloton atomic bomb dubbed "Priscilla" that was exploded above a custom-built mini-civilization at Frenchman Flat, Nevada, in 1957. Jon Else uses Priscilla and the bombs that preceded and followed to highlight the terrifying ways we have considered to blow ourselves to bits with nuclear weapons, how near and often we came to self-annihilation, how we managed to avoid it, and what we did to the planet, and to our own bodies, in the process, from wartime Los Alamos to the suspension of US and Soviet nuclear testing in 1992.

In the two decades after Hiroshima, a pair of dramatic stories unfolded alongside each the scramble to produce ever more powerful nuclear weapons, and the struggle to ban testing of those same weapons. The dramatic narrative takes in the physics of the megaton postwar bombs, the role of private industry, the near misses of the Cuban Missile Crisis and less well-known events, and the testimony of scientists, politicians, doctors, weapons developers, test-site workers, ranchers, and families downwind of test sites.

This powerful and persuasive book reminds us how we have—so far—prevented nuclear war by deterrence, diplomacy, and luck. It is for the moment a success story, and a warning.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

464 pages, Hardcover

Published September 8, 2026

Reviews

[David V.]

Received as an ARC via my former employer Barnes & Noble. Started 9-22-26;Finished 9-26-26. Over 150 pages of notes, biblography, etc., form the backbone of this study of the history of atomic bombs beginning in the early 1900's until now; the experimenters, the politicians, the scientists, the protestors, the survivors, the victims, the liars, the naive believers, and everyone else who had some responsibility for the promotion of nuclear warfare and those who believed it was an unwinnable conflict. At least , for now, we are a safer planet, but who knows what an unhinged dictator could do to annhilate the world accidentally or on purpose . Should be required reading for every poli sci major, every military officer, and philosophy major.