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The Contradiction of Nuclear Democracy

Robert Jay Lifton, Elaine Scarry, Randall Forsberg, and more

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This week marks 79 years since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, devastating the two cities, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, and opening a new era of apocalyptic warfare.

Our reading list this week collects pieces from our long archive on the legacy of the bombings, movements for disarmament and against U.S. militarism, and what Elaine Scarry—a frequent Boston Review  contributor and 2024 honoree of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War for her work opposing nuclear weapons—calls “the contradiction of nuclear democracy.”

In a special issue on the nuclear threat from 1981, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, author of the National Book Award–winning study Death in Lifereflects on the lives of survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Christine Kane tracks Massachusetts’s significant contributions to the nuclear weapons industry. And H. Bruce Franklin, who resigned from the Air Force in protest of the Vietnam War, examines the pursuit of American hegemony in the arms race.

Plus, Randall Forsberg—founder of the Nuclear Freeze campaign—leads a forum on a path to the end of war; Vivian Gornick reads the rivalry between Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller; Stephen Phelan and Estelle Jussim look at movies and artwork of nuclear apocalypse; and more.

With virtually no democratic oversight and over 6,500 missiles in the United States alone, the use of nuclear weapons is almost inevitable.

Elaine Scarry, Rachel Ablow

Why don’t we make movies about nuclear war anymore? 

Stephen Phelan

It showed how a big-tent coalition can change policy and win elections.

Andrew Lanham

The rivalry between J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller was a rivalry to end the world.

Vivian Gornick

Modern weapons are so destructive that war is less and less likely to take place.

The United States in the arms race.

H. Bruce Franklin

A report on the state’s nuclear weapons industry.

Christine L. Kane

Atomic scientists against the arms race.

Alice Kimball Smith

The artwork of nuclear survivors.

Estelle Jussim

None of us should rest as long as nuclear weapons are loose in the world.

Howard L. Rosenberg

The dominant proposition of the atomic age cannot be refuted with any single sweeping show of virtue analogous to the bomb.

Shirley Hazzard

The long-lasting social and psychological effects of the bomb.

Robert Jay Lifton

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