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Article: ONE NATION UNDERGROUND: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture.(Review)
- Article from:
- The Washington Monthly
- Article date:
- October 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Washington Monthly Company. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ONE NATION UNDERGROUND: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture by Kenneth D. Rose New York University Press, $28.95
AMERICANS NEVER ACTUALLY had to live in fallout shelters, but shelters wound up living in us: Forty years after nuke-fearing suburbanites set about digging up their backyards, the underground sanctuary survives as a supreme example of mid-century kitsch, the civil-defense version of the malt shop. These days, the once-secret Greenbrier shelter, built to protect Congress from the Soviets, offers tours for curious nuclear buffs. A single-family shelter, meanwhile, stars in the 1999 romantic comedy Blast From the Past, playing the inadvertent time ...