The Myths of August: A Personal Exploration of Our Tragic Cold War Affair with the Atom

by Stewart L. Udall

Book Overview

From the former congressman and Secretary of the Interior--a staggering expose of the American atomic policy. In the name of safeguarding the nation from the Soviets, the U.S. knowingly exposed millions of its citizens to toxic radiation. Now one of the first lawyers to champion the cause of these Americans shows how politics poisoned our people.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679433643
• ISBN13: 9780679433644
• Release Date: May 1994
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 399 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.6" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Deals with the devil

The United States made a deal with the devil in 1945 and, with luck, we can learn lessons from that bargain which will make our world safer. In THE MYTHS OF AUGUST, Stewart L. Udall presents his analysis of the Cold War arms race, the secrecy and lack of accountability in government that it spawned,and the failure of the nuclear electric power industry that rode the bomb's coattails into public policy. Along the way the former congressman and Secretary of the Interior delivers his unflinching judgement of the men and motives that turned lies into public policy, took the world to the brink of nuclear war, and devastated both the Soviet and U.S. economies in a costly game of multi-megaton one-upmanship. His thoroughly researched tale of the impact of atomic power on our society is damning in its assessment of Roosevelt's (and then Truman's) Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson who single handedly delayed the end of the war with Japan in order to see "his" bombs dropped. (And then claimed the massive destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had hastened the end of the conflict.) Udall is no less scathing in his indictment of the Atomic Energy Commission for knowingly permitting the irradiation of uranium miners and residents downwind of nuclear tests - and then lying to the public and hiding evidence from federal courts about radiation's danger. Nor does he spare Ronald Reagan who he asserts allowed Japan and Germany to overtake the U.S. economically, while we pursued an entirely unneccessary peacetime arms buildup and, at the same time, created an almost insurmountable national debt. Readers interested in the origins of government by a top secret elite and the ways in which democracy can be subverted by ideologues in the halls of power, a concise history of the radiation poisoning of America and our massive monetary commitment to the economic black hole of nuclear electricity, and an insiders' view of the federal machine in the last half of this century, will find this book fascinating. If we survive our daliiance with fission, the clear vision of reporters like Udall will deserve a full measure of credit.

Excellent introduction to Bad Government

Udall writes about 1) The development of a non-public apparatus mixing government and industry that originated at Los Alamos. 2) The awful decisions and actions that apparatus undertook: -Ignoring reasonable safety precaustions for uranium miners and civilians downwind of bomb test sites. -Pursuing absurd and useless projects- atomic airplane, nuclear dynamite, and my personal favorite: closing the straits of Gibraltar and using the Mediteranean to irrigate the Sahara desert. Udall attributes these to the isolated decision making structure that refused any input from outside sources, and used the classification process to hide their worst decisions. (Any of this sound familiar?) 3) The apparatus came into being because there were few people outside the manhatten project who understood nuclear power. Political leadership had no choice but to rely on these technocrats, who quickly became adept at spinning yarns about how they'd change the world so long as they got funding (radiation-free nuclear bombs, unlimited energy etc.) Dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki wasn't just a staggering moral failure, it gave credibility to these people and gave politicians an excuse for not managing atomic power. This is an important work for understanding how government can go bad.