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Nuclear history bibliography, 2014

by Alex Wellerstein, published January 2nd, 2015

It’s time for the third-annual Nuclear History Bibliography wrap-up, that special feature of this blog where I spend a few hours searching academic databases for interesting keywords and then give you the results, with the aim of giving a rough guide to the state of the field as it is represented in print. The rules are the same as last time and the time before: the boundary of what is being defined as “nuclear history” is a vague one (the connection to nuclear technology has to be somewhat explicit, and it has to be a mostly historical work, talking about what happened and less about what is happening or should happen), it has to have a 2014 publication date on it (even if it actually was first visible before or after the year), and it has to be primarily something that was “published” (I have not tried to include all websites, but I have added a few “electronic publications” where they seemed too interesting to omit, at the end).

Met Lab - secrecy stamp (photograph by Alex Wellerstein)

If I’ve missed something (extremely likely, especially in the non-English literature), please feel free to let me know in the comment section. I don’t claim to have read even a fraction of these — this citations are just provided so that people (including myself!) can see what they’ve missed in the last year, and maybe follow-up on it later. All I’ve done here is spend several hours searching through various databases (and looking at a few journals that are rather standard for this kind of thing) and filtered out (usually by glancing at the articles themselves) anything that I felt met the above criteria. So it’s not going to be perfect. This year I’ve decided to be civilized about my citation-mongering and have gathered everything together into files for importing into Zotero, EndNote, whatever, here: books: RISBIB; articles: RIS, BIB. In places where I’ve been able to, I’ve linked to the Amazon page of the book, or to the DOI link of the articles.

BOOKS

Adelman, Kenneth L. Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours That Ended the Cold War. New York: Broadside Books, 2014.

Alvandi, Roham. Nixon, Kissinger, and the Shah: The United States and Iran in the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Andrew, Christopher M., David Gioe, and Leonard V. Scott. An International History of the Cuban Missile Crisis: A 50-Year Retrospective. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014.

Bernstein, Jeremy. Nuclear Iran. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014.

Blades, David M. A History of U.S. Nuclear Testing and Its Influence on Nuclear Thought, 1945-1963. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.

Bury, Helen. Eisenhower and the Cold War Arms Race: “Open Skies” and the Military-Industrial Complex. London, England: I. B. Tauris, 2014.

Case, George. Calling Dr. Strangelove: The Anatomy and Influence of the Kubrick Masterpiece. Calling Doctor Strangelove. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2014.

Coffey, Patrick. American Arsenal: A Century of Waging War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Collignon, Fabienne. Rocket States: Atomic Weaponry and the Cultural Imagination. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014.

Deamer, David. Deleuze, Japanese Cinema, and the Atom Bomb: The Spectre of Impossibility. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014.

Feiveson, Harold A., Alexander Glaser, Zia Mian, Frank N. von Hippel, Unmaking the Bomb: A Fissile Material Approach to Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2014.1

Fiandra, Emilia, and Leopoldo Nuti. L’atomica: Scienza, cultura, politica. Milan, Italy: FrancoAngeli, 2014.

Gill, David James. Britain and the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy, 1964-1970. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2014.

Gorobets, B. S. Ядерный Реванш Советского Союза: Об Истории Атомного Проекта СССР = The Soviet Union’s Nuclear Revenge: The History of the Soviet Atomic Project. Moscow: Krasand, 2014.

———. Ядерный Реванш Советского Союза: Судьбы Героев, Дважды Героев, Трижды Героев Атомной Эпопеи = The Soviet Union’s Nuclear Revenge: The Fate of Single, Double, and Triple Heroes of the Atomic Saga. Moscow: Krasand, 2014.

Harrer, Gudrun. Dismantling the Iraqi Nuclear Programme: The Inspections of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1991-1998. Abingdon: Oxon, 2014.

Itondi, Vincent J. African Americans against the bomb: Nuclear weapons, colonialism, and the Black freedom movement. Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2014.

Jiang, Caijian. Madame Wu Chien-Shiung: The First Lady of Physics Research. Singapore: World Scientific, 2014.

Jundt, Thomas. Greening the Red, White, and Blue: The Bomb, Big Business, and Consumer Resistance in Postwar America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Kramer, Mark, and Vit Smetana. Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain: The Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945-1989. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2014.

Leah, Christine. Australia and the Bomb. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Lewis, Jeffrey. Paper Tigers: China’s Nuclear Posture. Monterey, CA: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2014.

Lochbaum, David A., Edwin S. Lyman, Susan Q. Stranahan, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster. New York: The New Press, 2014.

Mahaffey, James A. Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters from the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima. New York: Pegasus Books, 2014.

Mallard, Grégoire. Fallout: Nuclear Diplomacy in an Age of Global Fracture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Masco, Joseph. The Theater of Operations: National Security Affect from the Cold War to the War on Terror. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.

McRae, Kenneth D. Nuclear Dawn: F. E. Simon and the Race for Atomic Weapons in World War II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Narang, Vipin. Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Nelson, Craig. The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era. New York: Scribner, 2014.

Plokhy, Serhii. The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union. New York: Basic Books, 2014.

Rabinowitz, Or. Bargaining on Nuclear Tests: Washington and Its Cold War Deals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Reed, Bruce Cameron. The History and Science of the Manhattan Project. Berlin: Springer, 2014.2

Rossiter, Michael. The Spy Who Changed the World: Klaus Fuchs and the Secrets of the Nuclear Bomb. Headline Book Publishing, 2014.

Scarry, Elaine. Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing between Democracy and Doom. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2014.3

Sokolski, Henry D. Nuclear Weapons Materials Gone Missing: What Does History Teach? Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute and US Army War College Press, 2014. (Free online)

Stoddart, Kristan. Facing down the Soviet Union: Britain, the USA, NATO and Nuclear Weapons, 1976-1983. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

———. The Sword and the Shield: Britain, America, NATO, and Nuclear Weapons, 1970-1976. Britain, America, NATO, and Nuclear Weapons, 1970-1976. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Wilson, James Graham. The Triumph of Improvisation: Gorbachev’s Adaptability, Reagan’s Engagement, and the End of the Cold War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014.

Wilson, Raymond G. Nuclear War: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and a Workable Moral Strategy for Achieving and Preserving World Peace. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2014.

Zwigenberg, Ran. Hiroshima: The Origins of Global Memory Culture. Hiroshima and the Rise of Global Memory Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Espionage Act secrecy stamp (photograph by Alex Wellerstein)

ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS

Adnan, Mubeen. “Nuclearization of South Asia 1998: Pakistan’s Domestic Constraints.” South Asian Studies 29, no. 1 (January 2014): 41–60.

Alvandi, Roham. “The Shah’s Détente with Khrushchev: Iran’s 1962 Missile Base Pledge to the Soviet Union.” Cold War History 14, no. 3 (July 2014): 423–44. (link)

Ayazbekov, Anuar. “Kazakhstan’s Nuclear Decision Making, 1991–92.” The Nonproliferation Review 21, no. 2 (April 2014): 149–68. (link)

Biess, Frank. “The Concept of Panic: Military Psychiatry and Emotional Preparation for Nuclear War in Postwar West Germany.” In Science and Emotions after 1945: A Transatlantic Perspective, 181–208. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Blair, Bruce G. “Mad Fiction.” The Nonproliferation Review 21, no. 2 (April 2014): 239–50. (link)4

Blavoukos, Spyros, and Dimitris Bourantonis. “Calling the Bluff of the Western Powers in the United Nations Disarmament Negotiations, 1954–55.” Cold War History 14, no. 3 (July 2014): 359–76. (link)

Bleek, Philipp C., and Eric B. Lorber. “Security Guarantees and Allied Nuclear Proliferation.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 58, no. 3 (April 2014): 429–54. (link)

Bowen, Wyn Q., Robert Dover, and Michael S. Goodman. “Intelligence and Nuclear Proliferation: An Introduction to the Special Issue.” Intelligence and National Security 29, no. 3 (May 2014): 315–22. (link)

Bronk, Justin. “Britain’s ‘Independent’ V-Bomber Force and US Nuclear Weapons, 1957–1962.” Journal of Strategic Studies 37, no. 6–7 (2014): 974–97. (link)

Brown, Robert L., and Jeffrey M. Kaplow. “Talking Peace, Making Weapons: IAEA Technical Cooperation and Nuclear Proliferation.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 58, no. 3 (April 2014): 402–28. (link)

Burr, William. “A Scheme of ‘Control’: The United States and the Origins of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, 1974–1976.” The International History Review 36, no. 2 (March 2014): 252–76. (link)

Butler, Stuart A. “The Struggle for Power: Britain and Euratom 1955–63.” The International History Review 36, no. 2 (March 2014): 324–41. (link)

Cameron, James. “From the Grass Roots to the Summit: The Impact of US Suburban Protest on US Missile-Defence Policy, 1968–72.” The International History Review 36, no. 2 (March 2014): 342–62. (link)

Choi, Lyong. “The First Nuclear Crisis in the Korean Peninsula, 1975–76.” Cold War History 14, no. 1 (February 2014): 71–90. (link)

Cigar, Norman. “Did Iraq Expect a Nuclear Desert Storm? Deterrence, Paradigms, and Operational Culture in a Weapons of Mass Destruction Environment.” War in History 21, no. 3 (July 2014): 274–301. (link)

Cimbala, Stephen J. “Revisiting the Nuclear ‘War Scare’ of 1983: Lessons Retro- and Prospectively.” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 27, no. 2 (April 2014): 234–53. (link)

Corden, Pierce S., and David Hafemeister. “Nuclear Proliferation and Testing: A Tale of Two Treaties.” Physics Today 67, no. 4 (April 2014): 41–46. (link)

Coutto, Tatiana. “An International History of the Brazilian–Argentine Rapprochement.” The International History Review 36, no. 2 (March 2014): 302–23. (link)

Dalsjö, Robert. “The Hidden Rationality of Sweden’s Policy of Neutrality during the Cold War.” Cold War History 14, no. 2 (April 2014): 175–94. (link)

Diehl, Chad R. “Envisioning Nagasaki: From ‘atomic Wasteland’ to ‘international Cultural City’, 1945–1950.” Urban History 41, no. 3 (August 2014): 497–516. (link)

Dvorak, Greg. “Who Closed the Sea? Archipelagoes of Amnesia Between the United States and Japan.” Pacific Historical Review 83, no. 2 (May 2014): 350–72. (link)

Farquhar, John T. “Arctic Linchpin: The Polar Concept in American Air Atomic Strategy, 1946-1948.” Air Power History 61, no. 4 (Winter 2014): 34–45.

Fazzi, Dario. “The Blame and the Shame: Kennedy’s Choice to Resume Nuclear Tests in 1962.” Peace & Change 39, no. 1 (January 2014): 1–22. (link)

Fey, Marco, Aviv Melamud, and Harald Müller. “The Role of Justice in Compliance Behavior: Germany’s Early Membership in the Nuclear Non-proliferation Regime.” International Negotiation 19, no. 3 (2014): 459-486. (link)

Fischer, Benjamin B. “CANOPY WING: The U.S. War Plan That Gave the East Germans Goose Bumps.” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 27, no. 3 (September 2014): 431–64. (link)

Foradori, Paolo. “The Moral Dimension of ‘Global Zero.'” The Nonproliferation Review 21, no. 2 (April 2014): 189–205. (link)

Freeman, Stephanie. “The Making of an Accidental Crisis: The United States and the NATO Dual-Track Decision of 1979.” Diplomacy & Statecraft 25, no. 2 (June 2014): 331–55. (link)

Fuhrmann, Matthew, and Todd S. Sechser. “Nuclear Strategy, Nonproliferation, and the Causes of Foreign Nuclear Deployments.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 58, no. 3 (April 2014): 455–80. (link)

Geist, Edward. “What Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima can teach about the next one.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (online, 28 April 2014).

Gheorghe, Eliza. “Building Détente in Europe? East–West Trade and the Beginnings of Romania’s Nuclear Programme, 1964–70.” European Review of History 21, no. 2 (March 2014): 235–53. (link)

Hamblin, Jacob Darwin. “The Nuclearization of Iran in the Seventies.” Diplomatic History 38, no. 5 (November 2014): 1114–35. (link)

Hanhimäki, Jussi M. “The (really) Good War? Cold War Nostalgia and American Foreign Policy.” Cold War History 14, no. 4 (November 2014): 673–83. (link)

Hilfrich, Fabian. “Roots of Animosity: Bonn’s Reaction to US Pressures in Nuclear Proliferation.” International History Review 36, no. 2 (March 2014): 277–301. (link)

Jessee, E. Jerry. “A Heightened Controversy: Nuclear Weapons Testing, Radioactive Tracers, and the Dynamic Stratosphere.” In Toxic Airs: Body, Place, Planet in Historical Perspective, edited by Ann Johnson and James Rodger Fleming, 152–80. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014.

Jones, Christopher M., and Kevin P. Marsh. “The Odyssey of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.” The Nonproliferation Review 21, no. 2 (April 2014): 207–27. (link)

Jonter, Thomas, and Emma Rosengren. “From Nuclear Weapons Acquisition to Nuclear Disarmament – the Swedish Case.” Medicine, Conflict and Survival 30, no. sup1 (July 2014): s46–s63. (link)

Kadercan, Burak. “Busting Myths – Five Books on The Cuban Missile Crisis in Its Fiftieth Anniversary.” Cold War History 14, no. 3 (July 2014): 445–51. (link)

Kampani, Gaurav. “New Delhi’s Long Nuclear Journey: How Secrecy and Institutional Roadblocks Delayed India’s Weaponization.” International Security 38, no. 4 (2014): 79–114. (link)

Kimble, James J. “Mutually Assured Disparagement: Enmification and Enlightenment in Early 1950s Mad.” Studies in American Humor, no. 30 (January 2014): 123–34. (link)

Krige, John. “US Technological Superiority and the Special Nuclear Relationship: Contrasting British and US Policies for Controlling the Proliferation of Gas-Centrifuge Enrichment.” International History Review 36, no. 2 (March 2014): 230–51. (link)

Lever, Paul. “The Cold War: The Golden Age of Arms Control.” Cold War History 14, no. 4 (October 2014): 501–13. (link)

Meilinger, Phillip S. “Getting to the Target: The Penetration Problem in Strategic Air Command during the 1950s.” Air Power History 61, no. 3 (Fall 2014): 38–49.

Miller, Nicholas L. “Nuclear Dominoes: A Self-Defeating Prophecy?” Security Studies 23, no. 1 (January 2014): 33–73. (link)

Montgomery, Alexander H., and Adam Mount. “Misestimation: Explaining US Failures to Predict Nuclear Weapons Programs.” Intelligence and National Security 29, no. 3 (May 2014): 357–86. (link)

Moore, Richard. “A Proliferation of Royal Air Forces.” The Nonproliferation Review 21, no. 2 (April 2014): 169–87. (link)

Nidecker, Andreas. “The Swiss Nuclear Bomb Dream.” Medicine, Conflict and Survival 30, no. sup1 (July 2014): s64–s70. (link)

Nielsen, Kristian H., Henry Nielsen, and Janet Martin-Nielsen. “City under the Ice: The Closed World of Camp Century in Cold War Culture.” Science as Culture 23, no. 4 (October 2014): 443–64. (link)

Oatsvall, Neil. “Atomic Agriculture: Policymaking, Food Production, and Nuclear Technologies in the United States, 1945–1960.” Agricultural History 88, no. 3 (July 2014): 368–87. (link)

Palmer, Diego A. Ruiz. “The NATO-Warsaw Pact Competition in the 1970s and 1980s: A Revolution in Military Affairs in the Making or the End of a Strategic Age?” Cold War History 14, no. 4 (October 2014): 533–73. (link)

Popp, Roland. “Introduction: Global Order, Cooperation between the Superpowers, and Alliance Politics in the Making of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime.” The International History Review 36, no. 2 (March 2014): 195–209. (link)

Portela, Clara. “The Rise and Fall of Spain’s ‘nuclear Exceptionalism.'” European Security 23, no. 1 (January 2, 2014): 90–105. (link)

Rawnsley, Adam, and David Brown. “The Littlest Boy: Twenty Years after Hiroshima, Elite American Troops Trained to Stop a Soviet Invasion–with Nuclear Weapons Strapped to Their Backs.” Foreign Policy, no. 204 (2014): 48. (link)

Reed, B. “The Feed Materials Program of the Manhattan Project: A Foundational Component of the Nuclear Weapons Complex.” Physics in Perspective 16, no. 4 (December 2014): 461–79. (link)

Rich, Timothy. “Propaganda with Purpose: Uncovering Patterns in North Korean Nuclear Coverage, 1997–2012.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 14, no. 3 (September 2014): 427–53.

Ritus, V. I. “Work of the Tamm–Sakharov Group on the First Hydrogen Bomb.” Physics-Uspekhi 57, no. 9 (September 30, 2014): 1–1. (link)

Rubinson, Paul. “The Global Effects of Nuclear Winter: Science and Antinuclear Protest in the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1980s.” Cold War History 14, no. 1 (February 2014): 47–69. (link)

Ryan, Maria. “Wilful Blindness or Blissful Ignorance? The United States and the Successful Denuclearization of Iraq.” Intelligence and National Security 29, no. 3 (May 4, 2014): 458–86. (link)

Sambaluk, Nicholas Michael. “US Policymakers Confront Aerospace Doctrine, 1957–59.” Cold War History 14, no. 1 (January 2, 2014): 91–107. (link)

Shipilova, Anna. “From Local to National Experience: Has Hiroshima Become a ‘Trauma for Everybody’?” Japanese Studies 34, no. 2 (September 2014): 193–211. (link)

Sloan, Phillip R. “Molecularizing Chicago—1945–1965: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the University of Chicago Biophysics Program.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 44, no. 4 (September 1, 2014): 364–412. (link)

Smith, Matt, and Katharine Mieszkowski. “Treasure Island Cleanup Exposes Navy’s Mishandling of Its Nuclear Past.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 70, no. 3 (May 1, 2014): 65–78. (link)

Southern, Jacquelyn. “Changing Nature: Union Discourse and the Fermi Atomic Power Plant.” International Labor and Working-Class History 85 (March 2014): 33–58. (link)

Spinardi, Graham. “Technical Controversy and Ballistic Missile Defence: Disputing Epistemic Authority in the Development of Hit-to-Kill Technology.” Science as Culture 23, no. 1 (January 2, 2014): 1–26. (link)

Swango, Dane. “The United States and the Role of Nuclear Co-Operation and Assistance in the Design of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.” The International History Review 36, no. 2 (March 15, 2014): 210–29. (link)

Turchetti, Simone. “A Most Active Customer: How the U.S. Administration Helped the Italian Atomic Energy Project to ‘De-Develop.'” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 44, no. 5 (November 1, 2014): 470–502. (link)

Van der Meer, Sico. “Forgoing the Nuclear Option: States That Could Build Nuclear Weapons but Chose Not to Do so.” Medicine, Conflict and Survival 30, no. sup1 (July 31, 2014): s27–s34. (link)

Van Munster, Rens, and Casper Sylvest. “Reclaiming Nuclear Politics? Nuclear Realism, the H-Bomb and Globality.” Security Dialogue 45, no. 6 (December 2014): 530–47. (link)

Young, Ken. “Cold War Insecurities and the Curious Case of John Strachey.” Intelligence and National Security 29, no. 6 (November 2, 2014): 901–25. (link)

"Distribution of Fallout — Soviet Total Attack 'Low' Force," form the Net Evaluation Subcommittee Report, 1961. Source: National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 480

“Distribution of Fallout — Soviet Total Attack ‘Low’ Force,” form the Net Evaluation Subcommittee Report, 1961. Source: National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 480.

ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS

This is a new section for this year. Trying to list relevant websites, blog posts, and so forth is such an ultimately difficult task that I don’t dare try it. But the below are resources that I expect to be around for awhile and are of such a high calibre that they shouldn’t be missed (primarily from the always wonderful National Security Archive at George Washington University).

The “SECRET” stamps used as illustrations above are both photographs taken by me of documents in the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park branch, in the summer of 2013.

  1. As I wrote about not long ago, I designed the cover and their website. []
  2. Reviewed by me in the American Journal of Physics. []
  3. Reviewed by Richard Rhodes in the New York Times. []
  4. I don’t normally include book reviews in this sort of thing, but I found this unusually informative and practically an article in its own right. No surprise, given the author. []

3 Responses to “Nuclear history bibliography, 2014”

  1. Allen Thomson says:

    Just to be picky, “реванш” is the French “revanche” and, while it certainly can be translated as “revenge”, it also has the sense of “return match, competitive game played against a rival that beat the team the last time.” Which I think is what is meant in the title you cite.

    • Thanks — As you can tell, I was translating it myself, and those titles were a bit idiomatic! If you have any other suggestions for the translations (the one about the “heroes” I found a little tricky to put into English, I assume it is talking about “hero” in the sense of a “Hero of the Soviet Union” and so on), I am all ears.