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Author Nolan, James L., Jr., author.

Title Atomic doctors : conscience and complicity at the dawn of the nuclear age / James L. Nolan Jr.

Publication Info. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020.

Copies

Location Call No. Status
 Farmington, Main Library - Adult Department  174.2 NOL    Check Shelf
 Simsbury Public Library - Non Fiction  174.2 NOLAN    Check Shelf
 West Hartford, Noah Webster Library - Non Fiction  174.2 NOLAN    Check Shelf
Description 294 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-280) and index.
Contents Life at Los Alamos -- The Trinity Test -- Delivering Little Boy -- Hiroshima -- Tokyo and Nagasaki -- Managing radiation and the radiation narrative -- Bikini and Enewetak -- Dr. Nolan and the quandary of technique -- 1983.
Summary "After his father passed away, James Nolan's mother gave him a box of materials that his dad had kept private. To Nolan's complete surprise, the contents revealed the role his grandfather had played as a doctor in the Manhattan Project. Dr. Nolan, it turned out, had been a significant figure. A talented radiologist, he cared for the scientists on the Project, helped organize the safety and evacuation plans for the Trinity Test at Alamogordo, escorted the "Little Boy" bomb from Los Alamos to Japan, and was one of the first Americans to enter the irradiated ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The documents set Nolan on a hunt for more information about his grandfather and more generally about the conflicted role that medical personnel played in the early years of atomic testing. The result is a compelling history of the dawn of the atomic age as seen through the eyes of men and women torn between their duty and desire to win the war and their oath to protect life. Nolan follows his grandfather and medical colleagues as they seek to maximize safety while serving leaders determined to minimize delays, and as they consider the ethics of ending the deadliest of all wars with the most lethal of all weapons. The result, Nolan shows, was a very human pattern of caution, co-optation, and complicity. A vital and vivid account of a largely unknown chapter in atomic history, Delivering Little Boy is also a profound meditation on the professional and moral dilemmas that ordinary people face in extraordinary times" -- Provided by publisher.
Subject Nolan, James F., 1915-1983.
Medical ethics -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
Atomic bomb -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
Atomic bomb -- Japan -- History -- 20th century.
Hiroshima-shi (Japan) -- History -- Bombardment, 1945.
Nagasaki-shi (Japan) -- History -- Bombardment, 1945.
Atomic bomb. (OCoLC)fst00820568
Medical ethics. (OCoLC)fst01014081
Japan. (OCoLC)fst01204082
Japan -- Hiroshima-shi. (OCoLC)fst01209723
Japan -- Nagasaki-shi. (OCoLC)fst01211968
United States. (OCoLC)fst01204155
Bombardment of Hiroshima-shi (Hiroshima-shi, Japan : 1945) (OCoLC)fst01352071
Bombardment of Nagasaki-shi (Nagasaki-shi, Japan : 1945) (OCoLC)fst01352095
Chronological Term 1900-1999
Genre/Form History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
ISBN 9780674248632 (cloth)
0674248635 (cloth)
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