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  • Atomic Americans: Citizens in a Nuclear State by Sarah E. Robey
  • William M. Knoblauch (bio)
Atomic Americans: Citizens in a Nuclear State By Sarah E. Robey. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022. Pp. 240.

In Atomic Americans, historian Sarah E. Robey examines how in the decades immediately following World War II, citizens worked within nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in order to lead the U.S. government to construct a Civil Defense state. To do so, she relies heavily on documents from these organizations, including letters, pamphlets, and films, alongside news reports and government archives, all to paint a vivid picture of an American electorate scrambling to save themselves from the bomb.

By the 1949 detonation of a Soviet atomic bomb, such fears were warranted. With the American atomic monopoly over in just four short years, U.S. citizens, for perhaps the first time ever, began to ponder how to protect themselves from foreign attack. Tensions only escalated at the dawn of the thermonuclear age in the early 1950s, and political leaders, such as Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, seemed to be ineffectual in providing succor to nervous citizens. In response, myriad NGO groups acted, mobilized public support, and ultimately influenced the 1963 landmark Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT).

Robey's argument aligns with previous works such as Kenneth D. Rose's One Nation Underground and Laura McEnaney's Civil Defense Begins at Home. Both examine civil defense efforts—and specifically the bomb shelter craze—in early atomic America. Like these works, Robey argues that concerned citizens faced a federal response to the nuclear threat that was, at best, noncommittal: "Bound by a host of competing political, fiscal, and logistical priorities … policymakers and government agencies … placed the onus of survival on individual Americans themselves" (p. 171). Faced with this reality, many Americans joined organizations that called for government initiatives to construct civil defense structures. Robey is convincing in showing that while the U.S. government resisted federal projects or mandates—mostly to set themselves apart from an autocratic Soviet Union with whom they were engaged in the Cold War—many citizens still sought national-level help. Their activism, Robey concludes, "created an important site of Cold War political engagement [and] also formed the very contours of what it meant to be a citizen in the Atomic Age" (pp. 171–72).

Robey's analysis of Civil Defense–related media—specifically short films and pamphlets—shows that there was a concerted effort to demystify nuclear science using emerging technologies of popular media. Frequently, scientific characters, often identifiable by their donning of a white lab coat, explained [End Page 1243] to unwitting film characters that nuclear science was not all that difficult or even dangerous. By breaking down the effects of an atomic attack (i.e., blast, heat, radioactivity), citizens could begin to parse out methods to protect themselves, such as they might against, say, a tornado or some other natural disaster. Another avenue for demystifying nuclear fears was through gender roles, often enlisting housewives to be the planners in charge of maintaining food stockpiles should a bomb explode. Through these methods, Robey shows that the Federal Civil Defense Agency (FCDA) strained to explain nuclear technology to lay citizens via metaphor, supposed expertise, and gender norms. The façade of safety, however, could not withstand the realities of radioactive fallout; by the early 1960s, activism to contain this danger reached a fever pitch.

Robey's conclusion—that this antinuclear activism contributed to the 1963 nuclear Test Ban Treaty—is sound, but it downplays the impact of fears that intensified after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Additionally, her arguments, however balanced and conservative, may overstate how effectual these civic-minded organizations were in confronting a U.S. government recalcitrant to restrain its nuclear ambitions. Of course, assigning causality is a difficult job for any historian, but Robey might have taken a more robust stand. Instead of showing the "contours of being a citizen" or the "dilemmas of nuclear citizenship," why not stake a claim? Still, Robey shows that behind every contour traced or dilemma confronted, fears of dying in a terrifying thermonuclear war remained. These concerned citizens may not have understood the...

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