Title The missile next door : the Minuteman in the American heartland / Gretchen Heefner

Published Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2012

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Description 1 online resource (294 pages, 18 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations, maps Contents Introduction : Q strange new landscape -- Ace in the hole -- Selling deterrence -- The mapmakers -- Cold War on the range -- Nuclear heartland -- The radical plains -- Dismantling the Cold War -- Conclusion: Missiles and memory Summary Between 1961 and 1967 the United States Air Force buried 1,000 Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles in pastures across the Great Plains. The Missile Next Door tells the story of how rural Americans of all political stripes were drafted to fight the Cold War by living with nuclear missiles in their backyards--and what that story tells us about enduring political divides and the persistence of defense spending. By scattering the missiles in out-of-the-way places, the Defense Department kept the chilling calculus of Cold War nuclear strategy out of view. This subterfuge was necessary, Gretchen Heefner argues, in order for Americans to accept a costly nuclear buildup and the resulting threat of Armageddon. As for the ranchers, farmers, and other civilians in the Plains states who were first seduced by the economics of war and then forced to live in the Soviet crosshairs, their sense of citizenship was forever changed. Some were stirred to dissent. Others consented but found their proud Plains individualism giving way to a growing dependence on the military-industrial complex. Even today, some communities express reluctance to let the Minutemen go, though the Air Force no longer wants them buried in the heartland. Complicating a red state/blue state reading of American politics, Heefner's account helps to explain the deep distrust of government found in many western regions, and also an addiction to defense spending which, for many local economies, seems inescapable Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes In English Print version record Subject Minuteman (Missile) Intercontinental ballistic missile bases -- United States -- History Cold War -- Social aspects -- West (U.S.) TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING -- Military Science. HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY) Intercontinental ballistic missile bases Minuteman (Missile) Social aspects SUBJECT West (U.S.) -- History, Military Great Plains -- History, Military Subject Great Plains United States West United States Genre/Form History Military history Form Electronic book LC no. 2012003666 ISBN 9780674067462 0674067460 0674070887 9780674070882

Other Titles Minuteman in the American heartland

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