By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age

Rating:
Summary: Excellent overview of the first 5 years of nuclear culture
Review: Paul Boyer is well known as a scholar of American millenialism, both religious and secular, from his book "When Time Shall Be No More", but gathering slightly less attention is his impressive volume "By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age." Boyer is a cultural historian, and grew up a pacifist, so its no surprise that he frames the years 1945 to 1950 as years of fierce contention over the role of nuclear weapons and energy in American society. His overarching thesis, is precisely that---the years of 1945-1950 showed a sharp swing from grave concern and fear over nuclear energy to visions of nuclear promise and technological utopias, promulgated by the U.S. government and the Atomic Energy Agency, with vocal, dissenting minorities present at each pendulum swing. Boyer speculates that this may form a model for subsequent generations' relationship with nuclear energy, from care to indifference and back again.

Boyer's method is to examine evidence of public thought and conversations during these five years, from "letters to the editor" of newspapers, to intellectual journals of thought, to cartoonists, to the literary world of William Faulkner and Gertrude Stein, to religious organizational bulletins. He makes skillful use of primary sources, demonstrating that while majority opinions could be clearly demonstrated to have existed, undercurrents of contention and dissention remained at each step. Boyer also makes it understandable that as Americans' expectations of another war increased (59% in October 1945 to 77% in late 1947, page 335) Americans sought not to curtail the development of nuclear energy, but rather trust in technological superiority and civil defense to survive the "inevitable " war, a concomitant response to civil defense campaigns, visions of technological utopia, and simply atomic fatigue---even a subject like nuclear war could only generate a certain sustained interest over a period of time if not directly confronting daily life in the U.S. However, Boyer also suggests that a drop-off in interest in nuclear issues may have been due to deep-seated horror rather than complacency (as noted by Elaine Tyler May) This may belong to the more speculate aspects of his study, given that in the late 40's and 50's open counternarratives to nuclear utopia were building, such as in the literary and poetic work of the Beats. But in general I find "By The Bomb's Early Light" an excellent, accessible account of the major movements in a fascinating period of cultural history, one clearly marked by ideological conflicts and disagreement rather than consensus.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent overview of the first 5 years of nuclear culture
Review: Paul Boyer is well known as a scholar of American millenialism, both religious and secular, from his book "When Time Shall Be No More", but gathering slightly less attention is his impressive volume "By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age." Boyer is a cultural historian, and grew up a pacifist, so its no surprise that he frames the years 1945 to 1950 as years of fierce contention over the role of nuclear weapons and energy in American society. His overarching thesis, is precisely that---the years of 1945-1950 showed a sharp swing from grave concern and fear over nuclear energy to visions of nuclear promise and technological utopias, promulgated by the U.S. government and the Atomic Energy Agency, with vocal, dissenting minorities present at each pendulum swing. Boyer speculates that this may form a model for subsequent generations' relationship with nuclear energy, from care to indifference and back again.

Boyer's method is to examine evidence of public thought and conversations during these five years, from "letters to the editor" of newspapers, to intellectual journals of thought, to cartoonists, to the literary world of William Faulkner and Gertrude Stein, to religious organizational bulletins. He makes skillful use of primary sources, demonstrating that while majority opinions could be clearly demonstrated to have existed, undercurrents of contention and dissention remained at each step. Boyer also makes it understandable that as Americans' expectations of another war increased (59% in October 1945 to 77% in late 1947, page 335) Americans sought not to curtail the development of nuclear energy, but rather trust in technological superiority and civil defense to survive the "inevitable " war, a concomitant response to civil defense campaigns, visions of technological utopia, and simply atomic fatigue---even a subject like nuclear war could only generate a certain sustained interest over a period of time if not directly confronting daily life in the U.S. However, Boyer also suggests that a drop-off in interest in nuclear issues may have been due to deep-seated horror rather than complacency (as noted by Elaine Tyler May) This may belong to the more speculate aspects of his study, given that in the late 40's and 50's open counternarratives to nuclear utopia were building, such as in the literary and poetic work of the Beats. But in general I find "By The Bomb's Early Light" an excellent, accessible account of the major movements in a fascinating period of cultural history, one clearly marked by ideological conflicts and disagreement rather than consensus.

Rating:
Summary: How America Learned to Love the Bomb
Review: Since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, discourse on the threat of nuclear arms has all but vanished, relegated to a relatively quiet resurgence of the Star Wars debate and to a few footnotes on the developmental history of the internet. Despite this current hiatus in nuclear consciousness, every American living today has at least a passing acquaintance with the concept of atomic annihilation; sitcoms, government press releases, popular films, and news media are inconstant but persistent reminders of the nuclear threat. Paul Boyer's By the Bomb's Early Light traces these media as they shaped and reflected American consciousness at the birth of the atomic age.

Despite Boyer's professed pacifism and his personal views regarding the ultimately menacing nature of the atomic bomb, the various events, opinions, and artifacts cited are evenly presented. This objectivity, however, makes for rather dry reading, especially when Boyer's connective tissue is compared with the lofty literary attempts to come to terms with the inconceivable he quotes throughout. This work might be more effective if it gave itself over completely to the format it seems to yearn for: an assemblage of excerpts and passages from the original works with Boyer's commentary confined to sidebars and brief introductory essays. Of course, Boyer's goal was to produce a comprehensive volume of reference material drawing from a myriad of venues and disciplines, not a coffee table book about atomic kitsch of the 1940's. While not as entertaining as the latter and by no means a cover-to-cover page-turner, By The Bomb's Early Light serves as an excellent resource and starting point for further research.