One Nation Underground - 9780814775233

One Nation UndergroundThe Fallout Shelter in American Culture\nAuthor(s): Kenneth D. Rose\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: New York University Press, United States\nImprint: New York University Press\nISBN-13: 9780814775233, 978-0814775233\nSynopsis\nWhy some Americans built fallout sheltersan exploration America's Cold War experience\n For the half-century duration of the Cold War, the fallout shelter was a curiously American preoccupation. Triggered in 1961 by a hawkish speech by John F. Kennedy, the fallout shelter controversy\""to dig or not to dig,\"" as Business Week put it at the timeforced many Americans to grapple with deeply disturbing dilemmas that went to the very heart of their self-image about what it meant to be an American, an upstanding citizen, and a moral human being.\nGiven the much-touted nuclear threat throughout the 1960s and the fact that 4 out of 5 Americans expressed a preference for nuclear war over living under communism, what's perhaps most striking is how fe.