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Jul 7, 2020
The Beginning or the End
How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Summary
Soon after atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, MGM set out to make a movie studio chief Louis B. Mayer called “the most important story” he would ever film: a big budget dramatization of the Manhattan Project and the invention and use of the revolutionary new weapon. Greg Mitchell’s The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (The New Press, 2020) chronicles the first efforts of American media and culture to process the Atomic Age. A movie that began as a cautionary tale inspired by atomic scientists aiming to warn the world against a nuclear arms race would be drained of all impact due to revisions and retakes ordered by President Truman and the military.
Greg Mitchell blogs at http://gregmitchellwriter.blogspot.com and is on Twitter at @GregMitch.
Joel Tscherne can be followed on Twitter at @JoelTscherne.
Joel Tscherne can be followed on Twitter at @JoelTscherne.
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Joel Tscherne
Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University and an Associate Faculty member at University of Arizona Global Campus. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne.
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