The Writing on the Cloud American Culture Confronts the Atomic Bomb

Presents 13 essays and two keynote speeches from the July 1995 conference "The Atomic Age Opens: American Culture Confronts the Atomic Bomb." Papers examine a variety of topics, including: the role of scientific development typified by the bomb in the dramatic shift in American attitudes about parenting; the collision of consumerism and the self-sacrifice in the name of national survival that went by the name of "civil defense;" the decline of the modernist aesthetic in the wake of Sputnik; poetry as a form of anti-nuclear social activism; and the role of the atom bomb in shaping such cultural forms as science fiction, children's toys, popular music, and American religion. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR