'This book is much more than a case study of nuclear power policy in the US … (it) combines historical research over a 30-year period (1945–1975), with an expert understanding of the literature on bureaucracy, on the roles of scientists and the citizenry in the policy process, and on the policy economy of post-industrial policy-making. All students of policy formation thus will find Balogh's book thought provoking. How refreshing it is to find a policy scholar who knows history and can write well.' Political Studies

• Acknowledgments; 1. Professionalisation and politics in twentieth-century; America: from fission to fusion; 2. The promise of the proministrative state: nuclear experts and national politics, 1945–1947; 3. Forging an iron triangle: the politics of verisimilitude; 4. Triangulating demand: the AEC's first decade of commercialisation; 5. The centrifugal push of expertise: reactor safety, 1947–1960; 6. The magnetic pull of professional disciplines, issue networks and local government; 7. Nuclear experts on top, not on tap: mainstreaming expertise, 1957–1970; 8. Nuclear experts everywhere: the challenge to nuclear power, 1960–1975; 9. Conclusion: harnessing political chain reactions; Notes; Bibliography; Index.