IsisCB Explore

Book ID: CBB347886249

Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis (2020)

Higuchi, Toshihiro (Author)

Stanford University Press

ISBN: 9781503612891

Publication Date: 2020
Physical Details: 328
Language: English

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

Google Books

Academia.edu

Military policy Environmental policy Cold War Nuclear and radioactive waste Environmental degradation Nuclear testing Nuclear weapons; atomic weapons 20th century, late 21st century Soviet Union Great Britain United States Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; Partial Test Ban Treaty; Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963)

Political Fallout is the story of one of the first human-driven, truly global environmental crises―radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War―and the international response. Beginning in 1945, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union detonated hundreds of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, scattering a massive amount of radioactivity across the globe. The scale of contamination was so vast, and radioactive decay so slow, that the cumulative effect on humans and the environment is still difficult to fully comprehend. The international debate over nuclear fallout turned global radioactive contamination into an environmental issue, eventually leading the nuclear superpowers to sign the landmark Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) in 1963. Bringing together environmental history and Cold War history, Toshihiro Higuchi argues that the PTBT, originally proposed as an arms control measure, transformed into a dual-purpose initiative to check the nuclear arms race and radioactive pollution simultaneously. Higuchi draws on sources in English, Russian, and Japanese, considering both the epistemic differences that emerged in different scientific communities in the 1950s and the way that public consciousness around the risks of radioactive fallout influenced policy in turn. Political Fallout addresses the implications of science and policymaking in the Anthropocene―an era in which humans are confronting environmental changes of their own making.

...More

Reviewed By

Review Richard M. Filipink (2023) Review of "Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis". Cold War History (pp. 549-551). unapi

Review Néstor Herran (2023) Review of "Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis". Technology and Culture (pp. 985-986). unapi

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB347886249/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book Toshihiro Higuchi; (2020)
Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis (/isis/citation/CBB212919708/)

Article Bruno, Laura A.; (2003)
The Bequest of the Nuclear Battlefield: Science, Nature, and the Atom during the First Decade of the Cold War (/isis/citation/CBB000340914/)

Book Edward Kaplan; (2022)
The End of Victory: Prevailing in the Thermonuclear Age (/isis/citation/CBB085828755/)

Article Masco, Joseph; (2004)
Mutant ecologies: Radioactive life in post-cold war New Mexico (/isis/citation/CBB001180560/)

Book Sarah E. Robey; (2022)
Atomic Americans: Citizens in a Nuclear State (/isis/citation/CBB648725464/)

Article Toshihiro Higuchi; (2015)
The Strange Career of Dr. Fish: Yoshio Hiyama, Radioactive Fallout, and Nuclear Fear Management in Japan, 1954‒1958 (/isis/citation/CBB079912877/)

Book Robert A. Jacobs; (2022)
Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha (/isis/citation/CBB596228330/)

Thesis Jessee, Emory Jerry; (2013)
Radiation Ecologies: Bombs, Bodies, and Environment during the Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Testing Period, 1942--1965 (/isis/citation/CBB001560759/)

Thesis Higuchi, Toshihiro; (2011)
Radioactive Fallout, the Politics of Risk, and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis, 1954--1963 (/isis/citation/CBB001562819/)

Article Aylen, Jonathan; (2015)
First Waltz: Development and Deployment of Blue Danube, Britain's Post-War Atomic Bomb (/isis/citation/CBB001550620/)

Book Weiner, Sharon K.; (2011)
Our Own Worst Enemy? Institutional Interests and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Expertise (/isis/citation/CBB001221236/)

Book Burke, David Allen; (2012)
Atomic Testing in Mississippi: Project Dribble and the Quest for Nuclear Weapons Treaty Verification in the Cold War Era (/isis/citation/CBB001213389/)

Article Barth, Kai-Henrik; (2006)
Catalysts of Change: Scientists as Transnational Arms Control Advocates in the 1980s (/isis/citation/CBB000670751/)

Article Hamblin, Jacob Darwin; Linda M. Richards; (2015)
Beyond the Lucky Dragon: Japanese Scientists and Fallout Discourse in the 1950s (/isis/citation/CBB661347126/)

Article Rothschild, Rachel; (2013)
Environmental Awareness in the Atomic Age: Radioecologists and Nuclear Technology (/isis/citation/CBB001213269/)

Article Masco, Joseph; (2010)
Bad Weather: On Planetary Crisis (/isis/citation/CBB000953623/)

Article M. X. Mitchell; (April 2017)
Offshoring American Environmental Law: Land, Culture, and Marshall Islanders’ Struggles for Self-Determination During the 1970s (/isis/citation/CBB355206157/)

Book Walker, John R.; (2010)
British Nuclear Weapons and the Test Ban 1954--73: Britain, the United States, Weapons Policies and Nuclear Testing: Tensions and Contradictions (/isis/citation/CBB001253002/)

Book Lente, Dick van; (2012)
The Nuclear Age in Popular Media: A Transnational History, 1945--1965 (/isis/citation/CBB001253035/)

Book Turchetti, Simone; (2012)
The Pontecorvo Affair: A Cold War Defection and Nuclear Physics (/isis/citation/CBB001210044/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}