“This fascinating and illuminating study ably traces Civil Defense from Bert the Turtle’s school drills in the 1950s to backyard family shelters in the early sixties. As Kenneth Rose insightfully shows, Americans, panicked over Cold War tensions and the threat of thermonuclear incineration, talked inordinately about fallout shelters, but few were ever built. That discrepancy reveals much about American society, culture, and psychology. This book almost glows in t… More >>
One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture
I very much enjoyed seeing the various cold war architecture and hearing about how fallout shelters were perceived at the time. I quite enjoyed the author’s treatment of the controversies connected with building the shelters and the issues the shelter builder had to overcome in order to build a shelter. I also enjoyed the treatment of why the idea of fallout shelters fell out of fashion.
Rating: 4 / 5
This book is a must have for everyone’s library that has an interest in shelters both public and private.
Steve
Rating: 5 / 5
If you’re a student of Cold War culture, many of the source materials used throughout One Nation Underground will be familiar to you. That’s not to imply that One Nation is boring, regurgitated, or any such adjective. Rather, Rose has crafted and extremely interesting look at how fallout shelters, for a brief period of time, was on the tip of everyones tongue, and yet despite the warnings and fears, America as a whole pretty much refused to dig in. Rose not only looks at the politics behind fallout shelters, but the historical, scientific, and cultural aspects, providing many sides both for and against civil defense, and explaining why those against won the argument and America’s psyche. Rose’s prose is never boring and always enlightening. A must read for any CW culture afficionado.
Rating: 5 / 5
One Nation Underground is a fascinating analysis of the Cold War fallout shelter, the global and political milieu in which it emerged, and the pervasiveness in which the concept of protection from nuclear destruction permeated the American psyche.
I came to this book out of a recent, amusing interest in the many remaining Fallout Shelter signs still posted on public buildings in my community. Where I live, Fallout Shelter signs still appear on a derelict retail board-up in the central city, a tidy ten-unit men’s rooming house, an unused police station, and numerous school buildings including my old grammar school where I learned how to “duck and cover” in the basement lunchroom.
Rose’s book not only documents the American preoccupation and political developments, prompted by President Kennedy’s 1961 speech, but the moral dilemmas as well. There was, after all,, a sense of doom at the prospects of thermonuclear obliteration.
The book is a serious, engrossing history that pulls from numerous sources and includes copious illustrations. It captures the fear, soul-searching, and debate during the first time in human history we faced the possibility of total destruction. This excellent book is a must read for anyone interested in American history, as well as the intellectually curious.
Rating: 5 / 5
One Nation Underground is a fascinating analysis of the Cold War fallout shelter, the global and political milieu in which it emerged, and the pervasiveness in which the concept of protection from nuclear destruction permeated the American psyche.
I came to this book out of a recent, amusing interest in the many remaining Fallout Shelter signs still posted on public buildings in my community. Where I live, Fallout Shelter signs still appear on a derelict retail board-up in the central city, a tidy ten-unit men’s rooming house, an unused police station, and numerous school buildings including my old grammar school where I learned how to “duck and cover” in the basement lunchroom.
Rose’s book not only documents the American preoccupation and political developments, prompted by President Kennedy’s 1961 speech, but the moral dilemmas as well. There was, after all, a sense of doom at the prospects of thermonuclear obliteration.
The book is a serious, engrossing history that pulls from numerous sources and includes copious illustrations. It captures the fear, soul-searching, and debate during the first time in human history we faced the possibility of total destruction. This excellent book is a must read for anyone interested in American history, as well as the intellectually curious.
Rating: 5 / 5