Add this copy of A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission to cart. $150.00, good condition, Sold by Ground Zero Books, Ltd. rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Silver Spring, MD, UNITED STATES, published 1962 by PA State University Press.
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Good in Fair jacket. xv, [1], 766, [2] pages. Illustrations. Sources. Notes. Appendices. Index. Some foxing to edges and inside boards and front flyleaf. DJ spine faded with tears and creases at bottom of DJ spine, some wear and soiling to DJ edges. Richard Greening Hewlett (February 12, 1923-September 1, 2015) was an American public historian best known for his work as the Chief Historian of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. He received his master's degree in 1948 and his Ph.D. in 1952. In 1952 he joined the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), compiling classified progress reports from all of the many branches of the AEC for the Commissioners. In 1957, Hewlett became the first official historian of the AEC. Hewlett produced his first volume of the official history, covering the time period of the Manhattan Project through the formation of the AEC. The New World, 1939-1946, published in 1962, and was a runner-up for the 1963 Pulitzer Prize. Hewlett continued his work and published the second volume, Atomic Shield, 1947-1952 in 1969, which received the David D. Lloyd prize from the Harry S. Truman Library Institute. For both of these books, Hewlett was awarded the Distinguished Employee Award by the AEC, the highest employee award given by the agency. Hewlett retired in 1980 while he was still working on his third volume of AEC history. It was published in 1989 as Atoms for Peace and War, 1953-1961. The book won the Richard W. Leopold Prize from the Organization of American Historians as the best book of the year on a U.S. federal government agency. From the Foreword by the Historical Advisory Committee: No other development in our lifetime has been fraught with such consequences for good or evil as has atomic fission. None has raised such challenging questions for the historian, the economist, the armed forces, the scientists and the engineers. The wartime scientific developments produced significant new techniques in public administration which came to be more widely used after the war, such as the enlistment of university and private contractors to perform new types of government activities. The fresh light this volume throws on the early history of these new techniques may prove helpful in clarifying current problems of conflict of interest in the "military-industrial complex." Unlike the history of the proximity fuze the development of atomic weapons was an international achievement to which great contributions were made by European as well as American scientists and engineers. All were spurred by the agonizing fear that the Nazis were well ahead of the free world in the development of atomic weapons. Among the wealth of new materials brought to light by Dr. Hewlett and Dr. Anderson, many of the most interesting papers came from a sealed safe containing the correspondence of Vannevar Bush and James B. Conant from 1940 to 1945. The ideas of these two scientific leaders became a part of the Interim Committee plan and of the Stimson proposals presented in September, 1945. They thus underlay the Acheson-Lilienthal plan. The materials from the sealed safe make possible for the first time a satisfactory account of the intricate wartime negotiations with Great Britain and Canada on atomic energy. The authors have presented a clear account of the possible routes to the bomb, of the obstacles blocking each path, and of the tensions built up during the quest for solutions. Both the scientist and the lay reader will find this not only the fullest and best documented but the most balanced narrative of the greatest research enterprise of the Second World War.
