Confronting the bomb - NBIH

Every issue of the podcast New Books In History is noteworthy. Each week Marshall Poe interviews the author of a book that was just published in the field of history. It allows us to listen to historians talk on a subject one of them is a specialist in - what more could the history podcast audience want?

The latest issue featured Lawrence Wittner who has done extensive research on the anti-nuclear weapons movement and has written a number of books on the subject, the last of which is somethign of a summary called 'confronting the bomb'. Wittner's claim is that the movement has been in existence ever since nuclear technology was feasible for weaponry. That is, as soon as scientists figured the military application an opposing movement came into existence. This was in the 1930's, long before the technology was actually researched and applied.

Wittner takes us through the history of the movement and wants to assure that the movement has been instrumental in the relative abolition we see today. This I find much less convincing, but surely the history is very interesting to have laid out.

More NBIH:
Henry Hudson's fatal journey,
Substance abuse in the midwest,
How could they continue - NBIH on WW1 soldiers,
After slavery was abolished,
Populism.