Reviews of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, will be posted here as I become aware of them.
“It is difficult to do justice to the richness, capaciousness, and elegance of Wellerstein’s analysis in a short review. Following the censors, one is tempted to say that the greatest feature of the book is REDACTED. But by the tale’s end, in an exceptionally thoughtful and enlightening conclusion, not only does the reader fully understand how nuclear secrecy can be historicized and periodized — one also grasps that ‘there has never been a simple, singular thing called nuclear secrecy.’ And this is the best possible book you could read about it.”
Luis A. Campos, Baker College Chair for the History of Science, Technology, & Innovation, Rice University
Review published in Isis (December 2022)
“Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Alex Wellerstein’s Restricted Data… is his skillful avoidance of familiar topics related to nuclear weapons, the Second World War and the Cold War. Wellerstein
has managed to provide a genuinely new contribution to some of the most well-worn areas in multiple historical subfields.”
Devin Short, University of Washington
Review published in The British Journal for the History of Science (15 December 2022)
“Having worked with classified information on and off for most of my adult life…, I am painfully familiar with the classification and declassification system. Despite my objections to several aspects of this system, I have come to take most of it for granted. As Alex Wellerstein says, by the mid-1960s the secrecy regime ‘had become so embedded in the fabric of American bureaucracy, and the American security mindset, that it is difficult to imagine anything different at this point.’ For me, therefore, it was eye-opening to read Wellerstein’s deeply researched and thoughtful account of the evolution of the classification of information related to nuclear weapons…”
Robert Jervis, Adlai E. Stevenson Professor and Professor of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Review published in Journal of Cold War Studies (28 April 2022)
“The benefits from reading Restricted Data are not only reserved for historians. Drawing on the case of nuclear secrecy in the USA, the book provides meaningful insights for STS scholars, especially around the questions of the relationship of science and technology with military and national defense, laws and rights, and power and governance.”
Masatoshi Inoue, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris)
Review published in Metascience (18 November 2021)
“Alex Wellerstein’s Restricted Data describes the origins of nuclear secrecy and tracks its history through the Cold War and beyond, showing how the framework of secrecy built around nuclear weapons developed into the apparatus of the modern national security state. It’s a stunning achievement: a historical exercise that documents not just all the things we cannot know but all the things we only thought we couldn’t know, and which Wellerstein’s dogged research has dug out.”
Steven Shapin, Franklin L. Ford Research Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University
Review published in London Review of Books (November 4, 2021).
“Based on interviews and years of tireless spadework in government archives, the [Restricted Data] showcases [Wellerstein’s] talents as a researcher and a skillful writer of narrative and analysis.”
Benjamin Wilson, Assistant Professor, Harvard University
Review published in Physics Today (1 November 2021).
“I found the overall narrative of Restricted Data refreshing because the story of nuclear history is not a clean or clear story. This is not just because of the secrecy involved but, as he notes, ‘it is a messy story, with few clear winners and losers, or heroes or villains.’This is a complicated story to tell, and Wellerstein does a fabulous job of clearing the history to the best degree possible.”
Marc Howard Rich, University of Colorado
Review published in Intelligence and National Security (20 August 2021).
“Wellerstein’s book confirms what I have long believed to be true: the information needed to make a nuclear weapon has been in circulation for a long time. In his book, Wellerstein discusses the Iranian and Israeli weapons programs. Israel certainly has this information and my guess is that Iran does too. The fissile material needed for such a device is much harder to obtain. In my view, controlling the spread of these weapons involves controlling the production of these materials. ‘From a technical standpoint,’ Wellerstein writes, ‘nuclear weapons should have been very easy to control.'”
Jeremy Bernstein, author of Hitler’s Uranium Club, Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma, and Nuclear Weapons: What You Need to Know
Review published in Inference (June 2021).
“Today, it is too easy for politicians and officials to punt questions around nuclear policy by telling the public that the topic is too sensitive, or that information must remain classified. But the core questions of whether or not we should have nuclear weapons, and who should be in control of their use, deserve a robust, open debate. As Wellerstein concludes, the danger of nuclear secrecy is that it has led to a ‘group think bubble’ on an issue that should be part of our national conversation.”
Alexandra B. Hall
Review published in The National Interest (May 30, 2021)
“The history of secrecy and security in the United States is in part the story of science and technology. In Restricted Data, Wellerstein has drafted one of the finest blueprints of our national security apparatus by focusing on nuclear weapons, its deepest cogs and wheels. He reveals the wiles, machinations, and ruses of physicists who first kept the secrets of the nucleus. He uncovers the prevarications, leaks, and conspiracies of the officers and bureaucrats who held those physicists to account. He has found a peephole into a stadium where the most important games are played.”
Joshua Roebke, author and professor at University of Texas at Austin
Review published in the Los Angeles Review of Books (May 19, 2021)
“An impressive and innovative monograph. . . . Restricted Data is not just a detailed chronicle of the ongoing secrecy versus anti-secrecy debate, but a profound, well researched and fluently written reflection on American social history since the Second World War, with multiple lessons to be learned.”
Vitali Vitaliev, journalist
Review published in Engineering & Technology (May 11, 2021)
“Wellerstein conceives of nuclear secrecy as a “regime,” or a bundle of thoughts, activities, and organizations that seek to normalize the performance of secrecy. Seeing secrecy as a set of practices enables him to research widely into not only censorship and clearance but also media releases, publicity, propaganda, and the trade and control of material objects.”
Kate Brown, Thomas M. Siebel Distinguished Professor in History of Science, MIT, and author of Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters
Review published in Science (April 23, 2021)
“Groundbreaking. . . . The best writers make the familiar seem foreign, challenging assumptions about a state of affairs we take for granted. It might seem obvious that building the most powerful weapon in the world, a device that could end human civilization, requires extreme secrecy. Yet Wellerstein peels back the layers of the nuclear onion to reveal a rich debate about what should be kept secret and why. . . . Wellerstein’s book is compelling and frightening as it confronts the reader with the confounding questions that scientists and government officials faced when trying to decide what information should be withheld.”
Sharon Weinberger, author of The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World
Review published in Nature (April, 19 2021)
“I’ve long believed that wrongful secrecy about our nuclear policies has endangered the survival of civilization. In Restricted Data, Wellerstein shows us how the dawn of the American atomic age ushered in a new era of state secrecy that became permanently embedded in US governance and culture. It’s a haunting look at the hidden mechanics of America’s top-secret nuclear program, and it asks vital questions about what happens when government secrecy becomes routine—and what it means for a global public left in the dark. My answer: catastrophic risk. It’s a monumental work.”
Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner and key figure in the Pentagon Papers case
“How much do you know about nuclear weapons? How much don’t you know? In this sweeping, insightful, and utterly original history, Wellerstein recasts the nuclear age as a fundamental struggle about controlling knowledge. He convincingly shows how everything about these weapons was, from even before their existence, tied up with a system of secrecy that has since expanded far beyond the atomic domain. Essential reading.”
Michael D. Gordin, Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History in the History Department at Princeton University, and author of Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the Birth of the Atomic Monopoly
“Official secrecy is the ultimate form of government regulation, and Restricted Data explores the management of secrets about weapons that can literally destroy the world. As Wellerstein demonstrates, for the past eighty years the demands of the military have often conflicted with the needs of a democratic society. Wellerstein is one of the great nuclear historians of our time. This book is fascinating, essential reading not only for what it tells us about the origins and workings of America’s national security state but also for what it reveals about the nuclear dilemma we still face today: freedom or the illusion of safety.”
Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and Command and Control
“Wellerstein’s imaginative and perceptive retelling of the history of America’s nuclear weapons will revolutionize conventional thinking and scholarship. Understanding how nuclear secrecy was often used to keep the American public ignorant—rather than America’s adversaries—goes a long way toward explaining a cold war arsenal of thirty-one thousand nuclear weapons that made no strategic sense. Restricted Data should be read by every concerned citizen, and President Biden should make it required reading for his national security team.”
Martin J. Sherwin, University Professor of History at George Mason University and author of Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis
“This book tackles a big and important subject—nuclear secrecy—and illuminates its history with a wealth of new detail. Wellerstein provides a long, sweeping overview of secrecy in the nuclear age, tracking its evolution from the pre-World War II discovery of fission to the present. He surveys a vital topic through the mastery of difficult archival sources and assembles a coherent, compelling narrative.”
Peter Westwick, Professor at University of Southern California and author of Stealth: The Secret Contest to Invent Invisible Aircraft