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Scott Kirsch

Proving Grounds: Project Plowshare and the Unrealized Dream of Nuclear Earthmoving Hardcover – Illustrated, October 6, 2005

by Scott L. Kirsch (Author)

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Although unthinkable by today’s standards, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission spent hundreds of millions of dollars between 1957 and 1974 studying the feasibility of using nuclear explosions for so-called “peaceful” purposes under a program called Project Plowshare. Nuclear earthmoving, promoted by the famed physicist, defense strategist, and anticommunist Edward Teller, was the most notorious of Plowshare’s experimental programs. Teller and his colleagues proposed using nuclear explosions to build canals, dig harbors, and create dams and quarries. Such “constructive” uses of atomic weaponry, they believed, would help defuse Americans’ fears about radioactive fallout and nuclear testing and would encourage continued support for nuclear research programs.

In Proving Grounds, Scott Kirsch traces the rise and fall of this astonishing cold war initiative. He examines the work that went into making “geographical engineering” or “earthmoving” an imminent possibility as well as the public controversy, scientific uncertainty, and political opposition that kept it—with the exception of several massive craters in the Nevada desert—out of the landscape.

On one level, Kirsch demonstrates how the history of Project Plowshare was shaped by the specific issues and sentiments that influenced American nuclear and environmental policy during the 1950s and 1960s. But Kirsch also argues that the lessons learned from this case continue to hold relevance today. By exploring key issues of science and risk, Proving Grounds warns that knowledge production and environmental politics are still very much intimately, and dangerously, related.

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Rutgers University Press
Publication date

October 6, 2005
Dimensions

6 x 1 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0813536669
ISBN-13

978-0813536668
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Proving Grounds offers a thoughtful, deeply researched, and very readable history of a determined if ultimately doomed effort to turn atomic energy to peaceful purposes by reconfiguring the contours of the Earth itself, starting with the Panama Canal. In exploring this unlikely byway of the Atomic Age, historical geographer Scott Kirsch casts a skeptical light on the American belief in progress through science and probes issues that remain as timely today as they were a generation ago.

-- Paul Boyer ― author of By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn o

About the Author

Scott Kirsch is an assistant professor of geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Product details

Publisher : Rutgers University Press; None edition (October 6, 2005)
Language : English
Hardcover : 272 pages
ISBN-10 : 0813536669
ISBN-13 : 978-0813536668
Item Weight : 1.26 pounds
Dimensions : 6 x 1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,351,462 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,808 in Nuclear Weapons & Warfare History (Books)
- #152,984 in Politics & Government (Books)
- #165,808 in United States History (Books)

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Michael B. Schiffer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2017

Verified Purchase

An excellent study of one of America's most ridiculous nuclear projects. A good read that will keep you interested

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Gogol

Awesome Hypocrisy

Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2008

Awesome, I loved it. It showed the ridiculosity of Project Plowshare and even referenced my hometown of Glendive, MT, which was an unexpected surprise. The book is anti-military-industrial complex, so that's what one should expect. It is a well-referenced historical work.

5 people found this helpful

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