Under the Cloud: The Decades of Nuclear Testing by Richard L. Miller, and: Bombs in the Backyard: Atomic Testing and American Politics by A. Costandina Titus

Abstract

technology and culture Book Reviews 331 technology as both a source of military superiority and as a bargaining chip in arms control negotiations. Finally, Ralph Sanders examines the integration of technology with strategy and with operational concepts. Using a review of major tech­ nologies and strategies since World War II as a background, Sanders argues that neither technology, nor strategy, nor operational concepts dominate as the initiating force for changes. According to Sanders, “acute changes” in technology and military thought are like Kuhn’s paradigmatic changes. He does not consider that innovations in low technology may be the sources of paradigmatic shifts, although Hol­ ley’s essay suggests that perhaps they should be. In addition, Sanders forgets (as do most of the other authors in this book) that some shifts in policy are the result of actual changes in external threat or at least changes in our perceptions of our enemies. Dennis Yao Dr. Yao, assistant professor of public policy and management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, has written on the economics of defense procurement and regulatory technology-forcing in the automobile industry. Under the Cloud: The Decades of Nuclear Testing. By Richard L. Miller. New York: Free Press, 1986. Pp. xii + 547; illustrations, notes, ap­ pendixes, index. $24.95. Bombs in the Backyard: Atomic Testing and American Politics. By A. Costandina Titus. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1986. Pp. xiv + 214; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $19.95. In 1963 the United States ceased testing nuclear weapons above­ ground, and the nearly decade-old fallout controversy faded away. Controversy had begun in the mid-1950s when fallout in several widely publicized accidents threatened health and even lives. Critical voices grew in number and volume as more frequent testing and efforts to develop thermonuclear weapons raised fallout levels worldwide, ex­ posing large populations to above-normal radiation. Medical opinion, however, then almost unanimously held such exposures to lie well below dangerous levels. It held equally harmless the higher, but still relatively minor, exposures received by test participants and people living near the test sites. Certainly most Americans deemed the health risks of fallout modest against the far greater perils of a less than upto -date nuclear arsenal. Underground testing seemed an ideal answer, stilling controversy by all but eliminating fallout risks while allowing nuclear weapons development to proceed apace. The issue proved merely dormant, however, not dead. By the late 1970s, two trends converged to revive concern about health effects of fallouts. Memories of the perceived urgency of weapons testing 332 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE dimmed as U.S.-Soviet relations improved and public trust in gov­ ernment eroded. At the same time, a growing body of evidence sug­ gested that even relatively low-level exposures might have more harmful long-term consequences than once believed. Medical findings and congressional hearings first began recalling the era of aboveground nuclear weapons testing to public attention in 1977. Since then, a number of books critical of that program have appeared. Richard Miller’s Under the Cloud may, in fact, best be understood as the latest entry in a series that includes such works as Howard Ro­ senberg, Atomic Soldiers: American Victims ofNuclearExperiments (Boston, 1980); Michael Uhl and Tod Ensign, GI Guinea Pigs: How the Pentagon Exposed Our Troops to Dangers More Deadly than War: Agent Orange and Atomic Radiation (Chicago, 1980); Corinne Brown and Robert Munroe, Time Bomb: Understanding the Threat ofNuclear Power (New York, 1981); Thomas H. Saffer and Orville E. Kelly, Countdown Zero: GI Victims of U.S. Atomic Testing (New York, 1982); Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon with Robert Alvarez and Eleanor Walters, Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation (New York, 1982); John G. Fuller, The Day We Bombed Utah: America’s Most Lethal Secret (New York, 1984); and Peter Wyden, Day One: Before Hiroshima and After (New York, 1984). These books vary considerably in quality, but all are one-sided, selective in their use of evidence, and highly critical of U.S. atmospheric testing, especially its health and safety aspects. Miller’s thesis, simply stated, is that atmospheric weapons tests af­ fected the health of not merely those at or...