TY - BOOK AU - Rose,Kenneth D. TI - One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture SN - 9780814775226 U1 - 303.6/6 22 PY - 2001///] CY - New York, NY : PB - New York University Press, KW - HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century KW - bisacsh KW - 1960s KW - American KW - Cold KW - backyard KW - challenges KW - countrys KW - during KW - early KW - expectation KW - fallout KW - height KW - preoccupation KW - reveals KW - self-image KW - shelters KW - social KW - troubling KW - with N1 - restricted access N2 - For the half-century duration of the Cold War, the fallout shelter was a curiously American preoccupation. Triggered in 1961 by a hawkish speech by John F. Kennedy, the fallout shelter controversy-"to dig or not to dig," as Business Week put it at the time-forced many Americans to grapple with deeply disturbing dilemmas that went to the very heart of their self-image about what it meant to be an American, an upstanding citizen, and a moral human being. Given the much-touted nuclear threat throughout the 1960s and the fact that 4 out of 5 Americans expressed a preference for nuclear war over living under communism, what's perhaps most striking is how few American actually built backyard shelters. Tracing the ways in which the fallout shelter became an icon of popular culture, Kenneth D. Rose also investigates the troubling issues the shelters raised: Would a post-war world even be worth living in? Would shelter construction send the Soviets a message of national resolve, or rather encourage political and military leaders to think in terms of a "winnable" war? Investigating the role of schools, television, government bureaucracies, civil defense, and literature, and rich in fascinating detail-including a detailed tour of the vast fallout shelter in Greenbriar, Virginia, built to harbor the entire United States Congress in the event of nuclear armageddon-One Nation, Underground goes to the very heart of America's Cold War experience UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780814776780 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780814776780/original ER -