The Writing on the Cloud ─ American Culture Confronts the Atomic Bomb

Presents 13 essays and two keynote speeches from the July 1995 conference "The Atomic Age Opens: American Culture Confronts the Atomic Bomb." Papers examine a variety of topics, including: the role of scientific development typified by the bomb in the dramatic shift in American attitudes about parenting; the collision of consumerism and the self-sacrifice in the name of national survival that went by the name of "civil defense;" the decline of the modernist aesthetic in the wake of Sputnik; poetry as a form of anti-nuclear social activism; and the role of the atom bomb in shaping such cultural forms as science fiction, children's toys, popular music, and American religion. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Alison M. Scott is Head Librarian at Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green State University.Christopher D. Geist is a Professor in the Department of Popular Culture at the same university.