A C Grayling
Atomic Angst
The Bomb: A Life
By Gerard DeGroot
Jonathan Cape 416pp £18.99
ODD THOUGH IT may seem, fascination with the bomb is greater than the horror it inspires, at least at the moment. When some memorabilia from the Enola Gay were auctioned two years ago, one punter bought two little plugs, one red and one green, which had been part of the first atomic bomb actually used in anger, the so-called 'Little Boy' that flattened Hiroshima. The pair went for $167,000. US Government efforts to block the sale, on the grounds that the plugs were government property, failed in court. No one minded that the plane's clock, and its navigator's Bible, were also auctioned; indeed, no one seems to have commented on the fact that the navigator took a Bible with him on a trip to exterminate a couple of hundred thousand children, women and men.
Weirder still is the fact that some people have chosen to get married in nuclear bunkers now turned into tourist sites. The test site for the first atomic explosions in the Nevada desert is now called an 'Environmental Research Park', and well it might be, because it has become a
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