Greg Mitchell, "The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (The New Press, 2020)

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Recorded07 Jul 2020

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dSoon 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

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