Heefner, Gretchen (Author)
Between 1961-1967, the United States Air Force buried 1,000 Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles in pastures across the Great Plains. This book tells the story of how rural Americans of all political stripes were drafted to fight the Cold War by living with nuclear missiles in their backyards -- and what that story tells us about enduring political divides and the persistence of defense spending. By scattering the missiles in out-of-the-way places, the Defense Department kept the chilling calculus of Cold War nuclear strategy out of view. The author argues that this subterfuge was necessary in order for Americans to accept a costly nuclear buildup and the resulting threat of Armageddon. As for the ranchers, farmers, and other civilians in the Plains states who were first seduced by the economics of war and then forced to live in the Soviet crosshairs, their sense of citizenship was forever changed. Some were stirred to dissent. Others consented but found their proud Plains individualism giving way to a growing dependence on the military-industrial complex. Even today, some communities express reluctance to let the Minutemen go, though the Air Force no longer wants them buried in the heartland. Contents: Introduction: A strange new landscape -- Ace in the hole -- Selling deterrence -- The mapmakers -- Cold War on the range -- Nuclear heartland -- The radical plains -- Dismantling the Cold War -- Conclusion: Missiles and memory. Access: Link to external web site http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674067462 SUBJECT(S) Descriptor: Minuteman (Missile) Intercontinental ballistic missile bases -- United States -- History. Cold War -- Social aspects -- West (U.S.) Kernwaffe. Militärische Rakete. Ost-West-Konflikt. Geographic: West (U.S.) -- History, Military. Great Plains -- History, Military. Mittlerer Westen. Note(s): Includes bibliographical references and index. General Info: Other format available: Electronic resource Class Descriptors: LC: UG1312.I2; UG1312.I2; Dewey: 358.1/75482097309045 Responsibility: Gretchen Heefner. Vendor Info: Baker and Taylor Brodart YBP Library Services (BTCP BROD YANK) 35.00 Material Type: Internet resource (url) Document Type: Book; Internet Resource Date of Entry: 20120125 Update: 20140926 Accession No: OCLC: 774147921 Database: WorldCat
...MoreReview Sturdevant, Rick W. (2014) Review of "The Missile Next Door: The Minuteman in the American Heartland". Air Power History (p. 42).
Book
Monteyne, David;
(2011)
Fallout Shelter: Designing for Civil Defense in the Cold War
(/isis/citation/CBB001212463/)
Article
Thompson, Nicholas;
(2011)
Nuclear War and Nuclear Fear in the 1970s and 1980s
(/isis/citation/CBB001231373/)
Article
Schwartz, Norton A.;
(2009)
The Air Force's Enduring Legacy of Nuclear Deterrence
(/isis/citation/CBB001030852/)
Book
Mahnken, Thomas G.;
(2008)
Technology and the American Way of War since 1945
(/isis/citation/CBB001230638/)
Essay Review
Schweber, S. S.;
Wellerstein, Alex;
Pollock, Ethan;
Bernstein, Barton J.;
Gordin, Michael D.;
(2011)
Contingencies of the Early Nuclear Arms Race
(/isis/citation/CBB001566754/)
Book
Vanderbilt, Tom;
(2010)
Survival City: Adventures among the Ruins of Atomic America
(/isis/citation/CBB001033354/)
Book
Stern, Sheldon M.;
(2012)
The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory: Myths Versus Reality
(/isis/citation/CBB001212706/)
Book
Gordin, Michael D.;
(2009)
Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly
(/isis/citation/CBB001022665/)
Book
Henry Richard Maar III;
(2022)
Freeze!: The Grassroots Movement to Halt the Arms Race and End the Cold War
(/isis/citation/CBB798931618/)
Article
Spinardi, Graham;
(2010)
The Rise and Fall of Safeguard: Anti-ballistic Missile Technology and the Nixon Administration
(/isis/citation/CBB001033658/)
Article
Schwartz, Richard A.;
(2006)
Family, Gender, and Society in 1950s American Fiction of Nuclear Apocalypse: Shadow on the Hearth, Tomorrow!, The Last Day, and Alas, Babylon
(/isis/citation/CBB001030981/)
Article
Jacobs, Robert A.;
(2007)
“There Are No Civilians; We Are All at War”: Nuclear War Shelter and Survival Narratives during the Early Cold War
(/isis/citation/CBB001030979/)
Book
Frederickson, Kari;
(2013)
Cold War Dixie: Militarization and Modernization in the American South
(/isis/citation/CBB001213736/)
Article
Berger Ziauddin;
Marti, Sibylle;
(2020)
Life after the Bomb: Nuclear Fear, Science, and Security Politics in Switzerland in the 1980s
(/isis/citation/CBB587905950/)
Article
Baracca, Angelo;
(2003)
Veinticinco años de estrategias nucleares: ¿Vivimos en un mundo más seguro y sostenible?
(/isis/citation/CBB000530001/)
Book
Elisabeth Roehrlich;
(2022)
Inspectors for Peace: A History of the International Atomic Energy Agency
(/isis/citation/CBB775978058/)
Book
David Bath;
(2020)
Assured Destruction: Building the Ballistic Missile Culture of the U.S. Air Force
(/isis/citation/CBB914841103/)
Article
Jameson, Robert P.;
(2013)
Armageddon's Shortening Fuse: How Advances in Nuclear Weapons Technology Pushed Strategists to Mutually Assured Destruction, 1945--1962
(/isis/citation/CBB001212162/)
Article
Peter B. Thompson;
(2022)
From Gas Hysteria to Nuclear Fear: A Historical Synthesis of Chemical and Atomic Weapons
(/isis/citation/CBB849204996/)
Article
James Michael Young;
(2020)
The U.S. Air Force's Long Range Detection Program and Project MOGUL
(/isis/citation/CBB122294622/)
Be the first to comment!