Jon Else combines history, science, politics, popular culture, and personal testimony into a narrative of the American nuclear enterprise, from Los Alamos to the 1990s, tracing the production of ever more powerful nuclear weapons, the consequences of fallout from them, and the efforts to ban testing entirely.
Priscilla, a single shot there during Operation Plumbbob, forms the stupefying centerpiece of Else’s book. He’s a limber writer, equally alive to atrocity and irony.
Through absorbing, sharp-eyed prose, the book traces the entire history of atomic bombs ... The historical and scientific narrative is punctuated by personal stories ... Gripping.
