Atomic Americans

Citizens in a Nuclear State

By: Sarah E. Robey

Narrated by: Trisha Patricks

At the dawn of the Atomic Age, Americans encountered troubling new questions brought about by the nuclear revolution: In a representative democracy, who is responsible for national public safety? How do citizens imagine themselves as members of the national collective when faced with the priority of individual survival? What do nuclear weapons mean for transparency and accountability in government? What role should scientific experts occupy within a democratic government? Nuclear weapons created a new arena for debating individual and collective rights. In turn, they threatened to destabilize the very basis of American citizenship.

As Sarah E. Robey shows in Atomic Americans, people negotiated the contours of nuclear citizenship through overlapping public discussions about survival. Policymakers and citizens disagreed about the scale of civil defense programs and other public safety measures. As the public learned more about the dangers of nuclear fallout, critics articulated concerns about whether the federal government was operating in its citizens' best interests. By the early 1960s, a significant antinuclear movement had emerged, which ultimately contributed to the 1963 nuclear testing ban. Atomic Americans tells the story of a thoughtful body politic engaged in rewriting the rubric of rights and responsibilities that made up American citizenship in the Atomic Age.

The book is published by Cornell University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

©2022 Sarah E. Robey (P)2022 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"Beautifully researched and engagingly written...an illuminating history of the atomic age." (Natasha Zaretsky, University of Alabama at Birmingham)

"An admirable inquiry into how living under the shadow of potential nuclear war shaped ideas of American citizenship." (Jacob Darwin Hamblin, Oregon State University)