A decade in the making, my first book, Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2021), is finally available this week!
This is my attempt to synthesize the origins and trends of nuclear secrecy from the 1930s through the present day, from World War II through the high Cold War and the end of the Cold War, with nods and discussions of how the legacies of choices and decisions made in the past still impact our present and future. It’s a lot of book, and I’m proud of it all, even though one could easily write something ten times longer (but then nobody would read it).
The amazing cover of the book, created by Isaac Tobin, based on some source images I provided. I really appreciate the way that the cover does a great job of giving the aesthetic appearance of a “nuclear secret.”
Because of the COVID pandemic, I’m not doing any in-person events for the book, sadly enough. But I am doing a lot of virtual events. A few of the ones upcoming that are open to the public:
- Wednesday, April 7, 2021 (3pm ET): Official book launch event as part of the Center for Science Writing at Stevens, hosted with my colleague (and Scientific American columnist) John Horgan
- Friday, April 9, 2021: I will be holding an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) session on Reddit’s AskHistorians forum for most of the day (I will try to answer all questions put there).
- Wednesday, May 5, 2021 (10am ET): I will be giving a talk on “Physicists and Nuclear Secrecy” as part of the Physics Today webinar series
- Monday, May 10, 2021: I will be giving an online talk for the Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program and the National History Center in Washington, DC, about my book, with the wonderful Kathleen Vogel as commentator.
If you’re interested in having me do a virtual event for your organization, let me know! And if you’re a regular reviewer of books, please review it! It is appreciated!
I’ll be keeping an updated list at the book homepage here, in case you want to stay in the loop on these things. The book website also contains reviews (right now, just the jacket blurbs), photos (some historical, some archival, some of me), documents (which I’ll be adding to over the next few weeks), and the book’s table of contents (just so you know what you’re getting!).
If you’d like a signed and inscribed copy of the book, this is possible! For the next couple of weeks (I’ll remove this when I stop doing this), if you buy the book through my local bookstore, Little City Books, I will sign the book for you and inscribe it however you’d prefer. All you need to do is indicate that you want it shipped to you, but in the Notes field of the order, indicate that you’d like it signed (and any information on how you want it dedicated, etc.). What I’ll do is swing by the store and sign it, and then they’ll send it to you. So it might be a little bit later than you’d get if you were using Amazon.com (and you will have to pay shipping), but that’s the only real cost of getting it signed (it is otherwise a free service).
I’m excited to have this out, after all of these years. And I suppose this is as good as place to note that last week I was told by my university that I have been approved for promotion to Associate Professor with tenure, which has also been a very long process! 2020 was a pretty long and difficult year for many of us, and though I had things relatively easy (good health, steady work), it was still a period of stress and endurance. So it’s nice to have some positive things now in 2021.
Per usual, it’s my goal to have a bunch more blog posts in the future. My issue is not enthusiasm, but time — my professional responsibilities have been steadily growing over time. This blog was started during a period where my responsibilities were blessedly low, when I was a postdoc. But the job of a professor is a busy one by comparison, and now that I am Program Director it means I have many more meetings, advising sessions, and tasks that need to get done on top of teaching and regular research. And, frankly, when I do have ideas for a blog post, I now spend more time weighing whether it would be worth trying to turn them into a professionally published article of some sort (but maybe that pressure will go down a bit now that I have tenure). But I’d like to get back into using the blog as a place to post interesting documents, images, and so on (a lot of that kind of output, these days, is ending up on my Twitter feed, which requires a lot less time commitment).
I pre-ordered this book as soon as I became aware of it and am really looking forward to receiving it in the mail soon.
Reading about the Cold War, nuclear weapons development and policy, and espionage is a hobby of mine and I look forward to gaining new insights from your book.
This is such great news, Alex!
Congratulations on getting Restricted Data, the book, published, and congratulations on getting tenure. I know what huge these milestones are for anyone in academia.
Congratulations on the book.
Do you know if the bookstore ships to the UK?
I live in the UK and I would like a signed copy.
I don’t think they ship internationally. If you (or others) are interested in a signed copy for an international address, send me an e-mail (wellerstein@gmail.com) and we can work something out!