Martin V. Melosi is Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen University Professor and Director of the Center for Public History at the University of Houston. His primary fields of study are environmental, urban, and energy history. He is the author or editor of nineteen books and more than 85 articles and book chapters, including the award-winning The Sanitary City (2000). In 2000-01 he held the Fulbright Chair in American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris, University of Helsinki, Tampere Technical University, Peking University, and Shanghai University. He is past-president of the American Society for Environmental History, the Public Works Historical Society, the Urban History Association, and the National Council on Public History.

• Introduction: A Most Controversial Technology; Chapter 1 A Community of Scientists: Atomic Theory over the Centuries; Chapter 2 Government Mobilizes the Atom: War, Big Science, and the Manhattan Project; Chapter 3 Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Aftermath: From Total War to Cold War; Chapter 4 The Cold War and Atomic Diplomacy: Deterrence, Espionage, and the Super; Chapter 5 Invincible to Vulnerable in the Age of Anxiety: Massive Retaliation, Fallout, and the Sputnik Crisis; Chapter 6 To the Brink: The Military-Industrial Complex, the Berlin and Cuban Crises, and the Lingering Arms Race; Chapter 7 Too Cheap to Meter, Too Tempting to Ignore: Peaceful Uses of the Atom; Chapter 8 Nuclear Power v. The Environment: The Bandwagon Market, Reactor Safety, and the Energy Crisis; Chapter 9 The Post-TMI World, Chernobyl, and the Future of Nuclear Power; Chapter 10 Pax Atomica or Pox Atomica--at the End of the Cold War; Chapter 11 Proliferation, Terrorism, and Climate Change