Technology and Culture

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 393 By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn ofthe Atomic Age. By Paul Boyer. New York: Pantheon, 1985. Pp. xx + 440; illustrations, notes, index. $22.50. Although historians have published many detailed studies of the political and diplomatic effects ofnuclear weapons during the Truman administration, they have left the cultural ramifications of the new technology largely untouched. Paul Boyer has admirably filled this void by investigating cultural and intellectual responses to the fears and hopes raised by nuclear energy in the years immediately after World War II. He surveys the ideas and activities of atomic scientists, publicists, journalists, theologians, social scientists, novelists, science fiction writers, and others as they sought to come to grips with the threats, promises, uncertainties, and perplexities of nuclear power. Boyer not only writes with a sense of irony and humor that makes his book a pleasure to read but also delivers new information and fresh insights to the existing literature. By the Bomb’s Early Light is a major contribution to understanding the history of nuclear energy and to assessing the cultural milieu of the early postwar period. Boyer demonstrates that the initial reaction to the atomic bomb was a “primal fear of extinction” (p. 15) that became prevalent remarkably soon after Hiroshima. The apprehensions aroused by the bomb gener­ ated impressive support for international control of atomic energy, a movement spearheaded by atomic scientists. Boyer suggests that the atomic scientists’ attempts to promote international control by exploiting widespread anxiety about atomic war not only failed but backfired. By appealing to popular fears, he maintains, the advocates of international control became “unwitting advance agents” of “anti­ communist hysteria” (p. 106) because they laid the psychological foundations for the crusade against communism and the nuclear arms race. Another way that Americans tried to deal with their atomic fears was to “search for a silver lining” (p. 109) by emphasizing the potential peaceful applications ofnuclear energy. Such hopes also foundered; as early as 1947 one writer asserted that the projected benefits ofthe atom had been “badly oversold” (p. 116). Eventually, Boyer argues, the fear of the bomb was replaced by indifference or resigned acceptance. He attributes the “deadening of overt nuclear consciousness” (p. 303) to efforts by the government and other opinion leaders to emphasize the future value of the peaceful atom, the feasibility of civil defense, and the need for supremacy in the arms race. Boyer submits that the prevailing cultural mood by 1950 was the “complacency of despair” (p. 351). Boyer bases his findings largely on massive research in a rich array of contemporary publications. This enables him to present authoritative evaluations of the views of those who wrote books and articles, though it is less conclusive in assessing the public mood. The nature of Boyer’s study inevitably leads to a focus on elite opinion; even hisjudgments on 394 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE the views of the public at large derive largely from editorials, letters to editors, and other sources that are, at best, impressionistic. But this is an unavoidable pitfall of the genre, and there seems no reason to suppose that the reactions of the silent or inarticulate were measurably different from those expressed in print. Boyer’s singular achievement is to outline cogently and comprehensively how people thought about and responded to their jolting introduction to nuclear energy. His book should command the attention of every scholar interested in the interaction between technology and society. J. Samuel Walker* The Man-Made Sun: The Quest for Fusion Power. By T. A. Heppenheimer . Boston: Little, Brown, 1984. Pp. xvi + 347; illustrations, notes, glossary, bibliography, index. $19.95. The mecca of our energy-devouring culture is fusion of light nuclei, the source of the sun’s power. Were it harnessed on earth, the deuter­ ium naturally existing in the world’s oceans would answer all extrapo­ lated energy needs while producing only a small fraction of the nuclear waste that befouls fission reactors. The goal has beckoned since before the wartime work that led to a fission, and later fusion, bomb. The goal of a break-even reaction has not been attained, although...