Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Between Rock and a Hard Place. Just to start briefly: So today is the big day, as my latest film, “The Atomic Bowl,” started streaming this morning over PBS.org and all PBS apps (AppleTV, Roku, Android devices,...
Scary Report: ‘The Nuclear Club May Double’ with South Korea, Japan, and Others
Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer and the Legacy of His Bomb. Returning again with coverage of yet another feature in the new special issue of The Atlantic with numerous important pieces on nuclear threat (and history) marking the...
Vonnegut and The Bomb
Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer and the Legacy of His Bomb. Last week, in exploring two major new pieces at The Atlantic (by Tom Nichols and Jeffrey Goldberg), I was not aware that they came from a kind of “special issue” marking...
James Cameron Going Nuclear for Next Movie?
Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood. Last week, in exploring major new pieces at The Atlantic and The New Yorker, I observed that coverage related to the 80th anniversary of the dawn of the nuclear era...
Hiroshima and Nagasaki Mayors Criticize Trump for Hailing Bomb Blasts
Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood. Quick post here to report that Trump is getting blowback from his recent reference to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The mayor of Hiroshima, for example, has invited Trump to...
On July 4, 1945: The Man Who Tried To Halt the Atomic Bombings
Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood. On July 4, 1945, the great atomic scientist Leo Szilard finished a letter that would become the strongest (and one of the very few) real attempts at halting President...
When a Famous War Reporter Stood Up to Rumsfeld
Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Between Rock and a Hard Place. Friday afternoon, President Biden posthumously awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to my old friend Joe Galloway. No one could accuse veteran war reporter Galloway of being...
Christmas Here – and in Nagasaki, 1945
Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Between Rock and a Hard Place. Since this is Timmy/Zimmy week here, and elsewhere, let’s just start with ecumenical Bob’s wildest Christmas song, “Must Be Santa.” Then, in case you missed the return of Darlene...
He Took the Only Photos in Hiroshima on August 6
Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Between Rock and a Hard Place. It’s in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present. ~ Charles Dickens Yoshito Matsushige, a photographer for the Chugoku Shimbun newspaper in...
Trinity and the Parts Left Out of Oppenheimer
Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s substack Between Rock and a Hard Place. Every year at this time I trace the final days leading to the first use of the atomic bomb against two cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in August 1945. In this way the fateful, and...