Reckoning Day: Race, Place, and the Atom Bomb in Postwar America

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments Long ago, as the story often goes, this book was born through the reading of key texts with a group of engaged and intelligent students. In the case of Reckoning Day, the texts were authored by Pat Frank, Judith Merril, and Philip Wylie, all of whom play featured roles in this book’s second chapter, and the students were members of my “Cold War Literature and Culture” class at the University of North Texas. While my debt to these authors and the many others joining this conversation is, I hope, implicit in each word that follows, this is the place to thank those smart students and the ones who have learned alongside me in succeeding semesters at UNT; their interest in our shared subjects and love of literature of all kinds inspire me daily. I thank as well the terrific faculty and staff at UNT—the English Department’s American Studies Colloquium, whose great speakers and panels are a constant source of intellectual stimulation; Chair of English David Holdeman, whose support and encouragement means so much; Diana Holt and Andrew Tolle in the English office, who expertly assisted in the provision of essential research and travel support; Kevin Yanowski, also in the office , for serving as my de facto research assistant numberless times; Learning Technologies adjunct faculty member Jonathan Gratch for his valuable technical guidance; and the Circulation and Interlibrary Loan staffs at Willis Library, who have quite simply never let me down. This book was also vitally supported through several Small Grants and two Research and Creativity Enhancement Grants, sponsored by UNT’s Office of Research and Economic Development. Further afield, I send my thanks to the talented staffs at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at the New York Public Library, the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at NYU, the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, and the University of Texas’s Perry-Castañeda Library and Harry Ransom Center. Thanks also to Martha Campbell in Austin, and special thanks to the late Paul Boyer, who encouraged and inspired me for many years. Special thanks also to Russell Wyland and my helpful readers at the National Endowment for the Humanities, who awarded this project a Summer Stipend in 2010. I am grateful as well to the readers and editors at the Journal of Modern Literature, Philological Quarterly, and Modern Language Studies, which have each published excerpts of vii this work. Finally, I thank Eli Bortz, the editorial and production staffs, and my helpful anonymous readers at Vanderbilt University Press. Back at home in Texas, I was encouraged constantly by dear friends and colleagues in UNT English and across campus. Special thanks to Alexander Pettit and Harry Benshoff who kindly read parts of this work; to Walton Muyumba for our long talks about African American literature and culture (and the Mingus reference essential to my conclusion); and to Deborah Needleman Armintor, Ian Finseth, Bonnie Friedman, Stephanie Hawkins, Eileen Hayes, Jennifer Jensen-Wallach, Jack Peters, Robert Upchurch, Kelly Wisecup, and Priscilla Ybarra for their marvelous friendship and ongoing interest in my work. I thank other dear friends—Kathryn Stasio at St. Leo University and Annette Trefzer at Ole Miss—with whom I’ve shared the academic adventure from the start, and my beloved family, for whom I write always: Mom and Dad in Chicagoland, Christine and Mike in New York, my darling Aurora and Solana, who’ve made me the Happiest Aunt in America since the day they were born, and the amazing Terence Donovan, who has changed my life. viii Reckoning Day RECKONING DAY ...