J. Samuel Walker

xi, 228 p. : 24 cm

"In Permissible Dose, J. Samuel Walker examines the evolution over more than a hundred years of radiation protection standards and efforts to ensure radiation safety for nuclear workers and for the general public. Clearly the risk of exposure to radiation, even in small doses, has aroused more sustained controversy and public fear than any other comparable industrial or environmental hazard, but this was not always so. The discovery of x-rays and natural radioactivity in the 1890s was greeted with enthusiasm, which turned to apprehension as evidence about the dangers of radiation gradually accumulated. What was known, and when, and what was done about it, is a major twentieth-century story reflecting a complex interaction of scientific and political issues.". "By clarifying the nature of the radiation debate, Walker puts in perspective the public's intense fear of radiation, whether in response to fallout from nuclear bomb testing, exposure from medical or manufacturing procedures, effluents from nuclear power or radioactivity from other sources. Permissible dose levels are a key to the principles and practices that have developed in the field of radiation protection since the 1930s, and to their highly charged political and scientific history as well."--BOOK JACKET.

More than fifty years later, the decision that brought prompt and utter destruction to the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continues to generate enormous interest and controversy. In this concise and balanced account, J. Samuel Walker offers a new look at the events and circumstances that lay behind President Truman's use of atomic bombs against Japan. Combining extensive documentary research with a critical reading of both American and Japanese scholarship, Walker examines the popular mythology about how the decision was made, delineating what was known and not known by American leaders at the time and evaluating the role of U.S.-Soviet relations and American domestic politics. Rising above an often polemical debate, he presents an accessible synthesis of previous work and an important, original contribution to our understanding of the events that ushered in the atomic age.

"Since the inception of the Atlantic Coast Conference, intense rivalries, legendary coaches, gifted players, and fervent fans have come to define the league's basketball history. In ACC Basketball, J. Samuel Walker traces the traditions and the dramatic changes that occurred both on and off the court during the conference's rise to a preeminent position in college basketball between 1953 and 1972. Walker vividly re-creates the action of nail-biting games and the tensions of bitter recruiting battles without losing sight of the central off-court questions the league wrestled with during these two decades. As basketball became the ACC's foremost attraction, conference administrators sought to field winning teams while improving academic programs and preserving academic integrity. The ACC also adapted gradually to changes in the postwar South, including, most prominently, the struggle for racial justice during the 1960s. ACC Basketball is a lively, entertaining account of coaches' flair (and antics), players' artistry, a major point-shaving scandal, and the gradually more evenly matched struggle for dominance in one of college basketball's strongest conferences"-- "Since the inception of the Atlantic Coast Conference, intense rivalries, legendary coaches, gifted players, and fervent fans have come to define the league's basketball history. Walker traces the traditions and the dramatic changes that occurred both on and off the court during the conference's rise to a preeminent position in college basketball between 1953 and 1972"--