The Myths of August; A Personal Exploration of Our Tragic Cold War Affair with the Atom

New York: Pantheon Books [A Cornelia & Michael Bessie Book], 1994. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Good/Very good. 25 cm. xii, 399, [3] pages. Appendices. Notes. Index. Slight wear to DJ. Inscribed by the author. Stewart Lee Udall (January 31, 1920 - March 20, 2010) was an American politician and later, a federal government official. After serving three terms as a congressman from Arizona, he served as Secretary of the Interior, under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1979, he returned to the West. In 1980, Udall was elected to the Central Arizona Water Conservation District Board and commissioned as a member of the Morrison Institute. Udall was presented with the Wilderness Society's highest conservation award. He was awarded the United Nations Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement. Udall received the Common Cause Public Service Achievement Award for his lifelong protection of the environment and defense of American citizens who were victims of nuclear weapons testing. In 1987, he published To the Inland Empire: Coronado and our Spanish Legacy, which retraces the trails of the explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado as he searched for the "golden cities" of Cibola in what now is Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Udall published The Quiet Crisis and the Next Generation in 1988, a revised edition with new chapters of The Quiet Crisis (1963). "The Quiet Crisis" introduced the Myth of Superabundance. In 1990, he co-authored Beyond the Mythic West, which examines effects of change upon the inhabitants and lands of the western United States. In 1998, he issued The Myths of August: A Personal Exploration of Our Tragic Cold War Affairs with the Atom. This is a devastating--but in the end hopeful--expose of America's atomic adventures from Hiroshima to the present, written by a former congressman, Secretary of the Interior, and longtime lawyer for victims of radiation exposure. A courageous and noble exploration of the cause and consequences of one of the most fateful acts in human history Udall's explorations began as a result of his discovery that Atomic Energy Commission officials had lied about the health effects of the atmospheric bomb tests from the Nevada test site in the 1950s, in the course of some of his unsuccessful legal representation of some of its victims. Here as always he names in his indictment of those officials who invoked national security reasons for their inexcusable behavior. . . .Udall is the highest-ranking public official with the courage and wisdom to tell us why we must end our cold war affair with the atom. The Nation. This timely and important book. Stewart Udall describes how since the end of World War II a small cleared elite group of nuclear scientists and bureaucrats has used the cloak of secrecy to limit public and Congressional oversight of America's nuclear policies. The tragic results, such as nuclear testing on unwitting Americans, are only now receiving public attention. "The Myths of August" makes a persuasive argument that excessive government secrecy erodes the foundation of a democratic society. Senator Dale Bumpers This] is a book about lies the kind of lies we tell ourselves to evade or obscure the truth of what we do or of who we are, the kind of lies we tell others to hide the same truths. Only here the we is the government of the United States, and the lies have to do with the machinery of deception that once kept this nation in thrall to an idea so fundamentally wrongheaded as to cross the line that separates stupidity from insanity. . . Udall gives us a solid grasp of the historical context in which the ghastly drama played itself out.