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by: Michael Harris
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 355.8251190973
EAN: 9780345481542
ISBN: 0345481542
Label: Presidio Press
Manufacturer: Presidio Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: September 27, 2005
Publisher: Presidio Press
Release Date: September 27, 2005
Sales Rank: 708371
Studio: Presidio Press
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
A real-life version of Catch-22–the searing and subversively funny memoir of a young army draftee’s experiences during the H-Bomb tests of the 1950s
In late 1955, twenty-two-year-old army private Michael Harris “earned” an assignment to Eniwetok Atoll, ground zero of U.S. Joint Task Force Seven’s Pacific Proving Ground. There, on a desolate stretch of the South Pacific, Harris was part of a grand experiment called Operation Redwing. The biggest and baddest of America’s atmospheric nuclear weapons test regimes, Redwing was one of those strange Cold War phenomena that mixed saber rattling with mad science–while overlooking the cataclysmic human, geopolitical, and ecological effects. But mostly, it just messed with guys’ heads. . . .
Meet the members of Harris’s new nuclear family:
·Major Maxwell, who put safety first, second and third–except when he didn't
·Berko, the wisecracking Brooklyn Dodgers fan who was forced to cope with the H-bomb and his mother’s cookies
·Tony, who thought military spit and polish plus uncompromising willpower made him an exception
·Carl Duncan, who clung to his girlfriend's photos and a dangerous secret
·Major Vanish who did just that
With The Atomic Times, Harris welcomes readers into the company of the brave men of Operation Redwing, where the local lexicon of f-words included such gems as “fallout” and “fireball.” As Harris tells it, daily life at ground zero could have been scripted by a committee comprising Franz Kafka, Sergeant Bilko, Hubert Selby, and Joseph Heller–all working within the constraints of the peacetime army’s unofficial modus operandi, “Hurry up and wait.”
When not playing radioactive guinea pig, Harris’s jobs included editing the base’s daily newspaper, cheekily named The Atomic Times, whose logo was a mushroom cloud and whose motto was “All the News That Fits, We Print.” In a distinctive narrative voice, Harris describes his h-bomb year with unforgettable imagery and insight into how isolation and isotopes change men for better and for worse.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A Darker Tale than Expected - Excellent!
When I began reading this book I thought it was going to just another amusing tale of GI life in the 50s. And there is plenty of humor and things to chuckle about, but the longer Harris and his cronies are stationed on the atoll the they call "the Rock," the more serious things become. "The Atomic Times" seems at times a well-wrought mixture of "Lord of the Flies" and "Catch-22." Young men isolated without women is always a bad idea, and I think many GIs throughout the Cold War years knew their own ... Read More
Rating:  - Somebody's been watching MASH
This book appears to be written by someone who has watched too many MASH episodes. With a good deal of Catch 22 thrown in. Claims to be fact but appears to be fiction.
Rating: - A Taste Of What I Never Experienced In Life
This is an excellent book that in non-technical language gives the reader some insight into the relationships that existed on this sparse island, Eniwetok, among the members of joint task force 7 during operation red-wing. Since this reader has never served in the armed forces and had an absentee father from the age of nine, I never was able to experience life in the armed forces. This book clearly explains what living would have been like, what having friends would have meant both in a positive and ... Read More
Rating: - I couldn't put it down
I stayed up all night reading this book . It was a great job of putting characters with different personalities together with a story of our countrys Atomic research. It is hard to believe what our military master minds did to the day to day enlisted man. The whole testing of the bombs was unbelievable. It was unbelievable what the men on the island had to do.
Rating: - The Atomic Times Revisited
Riveting! I read it in one sitting. The memoir of a man with a troubled childhood who finds himself while stationed at the Atomic proving grounds on Eniwetok Island during the mid-fifties. It is a story of men at their best and worst during a hairraising period in the development and testing of the US atomic bomb This book is funny, sad and scary at the same time. It is as timely today as it was in the period that the author describes. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in people and politics ... Read More
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