Kate Brown is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the author of A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland, winner of the American Historical Association's George Louis Beer Prize. A 2009 Guggenheim Fellow, her work has also appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, American Historical Review, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Harper's Magazine Online.
"Turning up a surprising amount of hitherto hidden material and
talkative survivors, Brown writes a vivid, often hair-raising
history of the great plutonium factories and the privileged cities
built around them... Readers will squirm to learn of the high
radiation levels workers routinely experienced and the casualness
with which wastes poured into the local air, land and rivers... An
angry but fascinating account of negligence, incompetence and
injustice justified (as it still is) in the name of national
security." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"An unflinching and
chilling account." --Seattle Times"Harrowing... Meticulously
researched... Plutopia has important messages for those managing
today's nuclear facilities, arguing for caution and transparency."
--Nature"The book tells two intertwined stories. One is an
appalling narrative of environmental disasters... The second
narrative is about the towns, the townspeople, and the creation of
a spatially segmented landscape that enabled those disasters...
This is admirable comparative history." --Carl Abbott,
Environmental History"Fascinating." -- Dissent"One of the Cold
War's more striking perversities never made it to public view. ...
Brown is a good writer, and she describes with precision the
construction of the two sites (a difficult process in the U.S.
case, an unbelievably horrid one in the Russian case), the
hazardous occupations undertaken by their inhabitants, and the
consciously contrived bubbles of socioeconomic inequality both
places became." --Foreign Affairs"Brown's account is unique,
partisan and occasionally personal in that she includes some of her
thoughts about interviews she conducted... But because she is open
and thorough about her sources, those are strengths to be
celebrated, not weaknesses to be deplored. It also means her book
is engaging, honest and, in the end, entirely credible." --New
Scientist"An amazing book... Brown found many parallels between
Richland and Ozersk that disrupt the conservative Cold War
dichotomy between the 'free world' and the totalitarian one. Her
research included not only uncovering previously secret documents
in both countries but also tracking down and interviewing old-time
residents of Ozersk and Richland. Her picture of the treatment of
plutonium workers on both sides of the Iron Curtain is enough to
make you gnash your teeth or cry." --Jon Wiener, American
Historical Review"Arresting, engagingly narrated... Kate Brown
skillfully mixes Cold War policy assessment and associated
political intrigue with sociological study of the lives of those
who lived and worked in those places... Plutopia is history told
through the voice of drama and investigative reporting." --Stephen
E. Roulac, New York Journal of Books"Plutopia is reporting and
research at its best, both revealing a hidden history and impacting
the important discussions about nuclear power that should be
happening today." --Glenn Dallas, San Francisco Book Review
"An untold and profoundly important piece of Cold War history,
Plutopia invites readers to consider the nuclear footprint left by
the arms race and the enormous price of paying for it."
--H-Soyuz
"Kate Brown has written a provocative and original study of two
cities -- one American, one Soviet -- at the center of their
countries' nuclear weapons complexes. The striking parallels she
finds between them help us -- impel us -- to see the Cold War in a
new light. Plutopia will be much discussed. It is a fascinating and
important book." --David Holloway, author of Stalin and the
Bomb"Kate Brown has produced a novel and arresting account of the
consequences of Cold War Nuclear policies on both sides of the Iron
Curtain. Interweaving documentary research in government archives,
reviews and revisions of the public record, and a host of personal
interviews with the citizens -- perpetrators, victims, and
witnesses -- Brown's Plutopia makes a lasting contribution to the
continuing chronicle of the human and environmental disasters of
the atomic age." --Peter Bacon Hales, author of Atomic Spaces:
Living on the Manhattan Project"It may be the best piece of
research and writing in the nuclear history field in the last 25
years - perhaps the best ever... Extremely impressive." -- Rodney
Carlisle, Prof. Emeritus, Rutgers University, author of
Encyclopedia of the Atomic Age
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