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Podcast: NBN Book of the Day
Episode: Ran Zwigenberg, "Nuclear Minds: Cold War Psychological Science and the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Description: Ran Zwigenbergâs Nuclear Minds: Cold War Psychological Science and the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (U Chicago Press, 2023) explores early efforts by the American military, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social scientists to understand the effects of the atomic bombings on the minds of those who had survived. In positioning the book as âa prehistory of PTSD,â Zwigenberg draws attention to the historicity of the idea of psychological âtraumaâ before the concept was institutionalized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1980. Nuclear Minds shows that the ideological temperament of Cold War science and the gendered nature o...