Fallout: An American Nuclear Tragedy by Philip L. Fradkin

Abstract

344 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE withstanding this piecemeal approach, Curtis accurately emphasizes the weight of such momentous events as the civil rights movement or Vietnam and rock’s connection with them. Curtis’s ruminations concerning rock’s effect are enlivened with provocative historical considerations. European immigration, reli­ gious versus secular input, Winthrop’s covenant theology, Turner’s frontier thesis, and Jefferson’s agrarianism are all explored. Curtis fails, however, to describe adequately the actual equipment that facilitated the electronic wizardry essential to rock’s flourishing and sustenance. Rock is brimming with examples of technological devel­ opments and refinements: electric guitars, amplifiers, synthesizers, improved drum kits, advanced recording techniques, music videos, and light shows testify to the crucial importance of technology. Unfortunately, Rock Eras does not sufficiently examine this decisive aspect of rock music. (One glaring sin of bibliographical omission is the absence of Rock Hardware, edited by Tony Bacon, which describes the nuts and bolts of rock technology.) Perhaps the most serious flaw of Rock Eras is the total dearth of oral interviews with those who actually made the music, many of whom are still living. The author’s heavy reliance on secondary sources is regrettable. Another limitation is the complete lack of photographs and illustrations that could have shown some of rock’s colorfully vivid performers and concerts, as evidenced in The Art of Rock by Paul Grushkin. Despite its shortcomings, Rock Eras is an important contribution to both the historiography of contemporary American history and rock music itself. Whether portraying Beatlemania or the mindless noise of some heavy metal groups, Curtis diligently depicts the various musi­ cians in question and their import. He is to be commended for his thoughtful approach to the rock phenomena. Timothy R. Mahaney Mr. Mahaney is a doctoral student in history at Auburn University. Fallout: An American Nuclear Tragedy. By Philip L. Fradkin. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989. Pp. xiii + 300; notes, index. $24.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper). In late 1950 the United States government decided to set aside a huge tract of almost uninhabited desert in southern Nevada for nuclear weapons tests. Reliance solely on offshore testing at Bikini and Eniwetok had come to seem risky as the Cold War deepened and almost foolhardy after the Korean War began in mid-1950. It was also very costly. Operations commenced at the Nevada Test Site early in 1951; until 1958 they took place mostly aboveground. Though tests began moving underground well before the 1963 test ban treaty TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 345 ended all atmospheric testing, many argue the damage was already done: Radioactive clouds from Nevada drifted across the 1950s landscape dropping fallout and sowing death. Philip L. Fradkin shares this view, but his thesis in Fallout goes a step further: The government betrayed its citizens first by failing to warn them of danger and tell them how to protect themselves, then by refusing to admit error, trying to cover up evidence, and fighting citizen efforts to win compensation. During the early 1950s, fallout repeatedly dusted people living east of the test site in Nevada, Arizona, and especially Utah. Operation Upshot-Knothole in 1953 created the worst problems. Not only was heavy fallout detected around St. George, Utah, but sheepmen throughout the region blamed unusual losses of ewes and lambs that spring on exposure to radioactivity. Their suit against the government failed, but three decades later the judge in Bulloch et al. v. the U.S. reversed himself, charging the government with perpetrat­ ing a fraud on the court by withholding vital evidence in the 1956 trial. Meanwhile, hundreds of people who during the 1950s had lived downwind from the test site also filed suit, alleging fallout as cause of cancer and other ailments. Consolidated as Allen et al. v. the U.S. and tried in 1982, the case produced significant damage awards. Though both Bulloch and Allen were overturned on appeal, they strongly suggested some fire behind the smoke of repeated accusa­ tions. This is Fradkin’s tack. His tale of government crime and (non)punishment relies chiefly on testimony and exhibits from the Allen and (to a lesser extent) Bulloch trials, bolstered by 150 more or...