Transported to the 21st century, Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and Enrico Fermi grapple with the legacy of the atom bomb in this “shattering and beautiful” time travel novel (Entertainment Weekly). Oh Pure and Radiant Heart plucks the three scientists who were key to the invention of the atom bomb—J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and Enrico Fermi—as they watch history’s first mushroom cloud rise over the desert on July 16th, 1945 . . . and places them down in modern-day Santa Fe. One by one, the scientists are spotted by a shy librarian who becomes convinced of their authenticity. Entranced, bewildered, overwhelmed by their significance as historical markers on the one hand, and their peculiar personalities on the other, she, to the dismay of her husband, devotes herself to them. Soon the scientists acquire a sugar daddy—a young pothead millionaire from Tokyo who bankrolls them. Heroes to some, lunatics or con artists to others, the scientists finally become messianic religious figureheads to fanatics, who believe Oppenheimer to be the Second Coming. As the ever-growing convoy traverses the country in a fleet of RV’s on a pilgrimage to the UN, the scientists wrestle with the legacy of their invention and their growing celebrity, while Ann and her husband struggle with the strain on their marriage, a personal journey married to a history of thermonuclear weapons. “Possesses the nervy irreverence of Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller . . . Can only be described as, well, genius.” —Vanity Fair

July 16, 1945. The world's first atomic mushroom cloud rises above New Mexico desert. At the moment of detonation, the men responsible for the bomb, the physicists Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, suddenly find themselves thrown forward in time to the year 2003. As they adjust to life in the 'future', Ann, a librarian, and her doting husband, Ben, befriend them. How the charismatic, time-travelling scientists affect both modern America and the marriage of these two ordinary people, is the subject of Lydia Millet's heroically mischievous tragicomedy. Oh Pure and Radiant Heart was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

A young Los Angeles real estate developer consumed by power and political ambitions finds his orderly, upwardly mobile life thrown into chaos by the sudden appearance of his nutty mother, who's been deserted by T.'s now out–of–the–closet father After his mother's suicide attempt and two other deaths, T. finds himself increasingly estranged from his latest project: a retirement community in the middle of the California desert. As he juggles family, business, and social responsibilities, T. begins to nurture a curious obsession with vanishing species. Soon he's living a double life, building sprawling subdivisions by day and breaking into zoos at night to be near the animals. A series of calamities forces T. to a tropical island, where he takes a Conrad–esque journey up a river into the remote jungle. Millet's devastating wit, psychological acuity, and remarkable empathy for flawed humankind contend with her vision of a world slowly murdering itself.

Risk Criticism is a study of literary and cultural responses to global environmental risk in an age of unfolding ecological catastrophe. In 2015, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset its iconic Doomsday Clock to three minutes to midnight, as close to the apocalypse as it has been since 1953. What pushed its hands was not just the threat of nuclear weapons, but also other global environmental risks that the Bulletin judged to have risen to the scale of the nuclear, including climate change and innovations in the life sciences. If we may once have believed that the end of days would come in a blaze of nuclear firestorm, we now suspect that the apocalypse may be much slower, creeping in as chemical toxins, climate change, or nano-technologies run amok. Taking inspiration from the questions raised by the Bulletin’s synecdochical “nuclear,” Risk Criticism aims to generate a hybrid form of critical practice that brings “nuclear criticism” into conversation with ecocriticism. Through readings of novels, films, theater, poetry, visual art, websites, news reports, and essays, Risk Criticism tracks the diverse ways in which environmental risks are understood and represented today.

Desert saint or destroyer of worlds: Oppenheimer biographies -- Under the sun: Oppenheimer in history -- History imagined: Oppenheimer in fiction -- The ghost and the machine: Oppenheimer in film and television -- "The bony truth": Oppenheimer in museums -- In his own worlds: Oppenheimer's writing

A new approach to the vast nuclear infrastructure and the apocalypses it produces, focusing on Black, queer, Indigenous, and Asian American literatures Since 1945, America has spent more resources on nuclear technology than any other national project. Although it requires a massive infrastructure that touches society on myriad levels, nuclear technology has typically been discussed in a limited, top-down fashion that clusters around powerful men. In Infrastructures of Apocalypse, Jessica Hurley turns this conventional wisdom on its head, offering a new approach that focuses on neglected authors and Black, queer, Indigenous, and Asian American perspectives. Exchanging the usual white, male “nuclear canon” for authors that include James Baldwin, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Ruth Ozeki, Infrastructures of Apocalypse delivers a fresh literary history of post-1945 America that focuses on apocalypse from below. Here Hurley critiques the racialized urban spaces of civil defense and reads nuclear waste as a colonial weapon. Uniting these diverse lines of inquiry is Hurley’s belief that apocalyptic thinking is not the opposite of engagement but rather a productive way of imagining radically new forms of engagement. Infrastructures of Apocalypse offers futurelessness as a place from which we can construct a livable world. It fills a blind spot in scholarship on American literature of the nuclear age, while also offering provocative, surprising new readings of such well-known works as Atlas Shrugged, Infinite Jest, and Angels in America. Infrastructures of Apocalypse is a revelation for readers interested in nuclear issues, decolonial literature, speculative fiction, and American studies.

This collection asks how we are to address the nuclear question in a post-Cold War world. Rather than a temporary fad, Nuclear Criticism perpetually re-surfaces in theoretical circles. Given the recent events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, the ripple of anti-nuclear sentiment the event created, as well as the discursive maneuvers that took place in the aftermath, we might pause to reflect upon Nuclear Criticism and its place in contemporary scholarship (and society at-large). Scholars who were active in earlier expressions of Nuclear Criticism converse with emergent scholars likewise striving to negotiate the field moving forward. This volume revolves around these dialogic moments of agreement and departure; refusing the silence of complacency, the authors renew this conversation while taking it in exciting new directions. As political paradigms shift and awareness of nuclear issues manifests in alternative forms, the collected essays establish groundwork for future generations caught in a perpetual struggle with legacies of the nuclear.

Art and poetry, mystery and desire collide in this sensual and “elegantly moving” literary romance set in the cobbled streets and painted halls of Florence, Italy (New Yorker). Margot Harrington, an American volunteer in Florence, is an expert at book conservancy. While struggling to save a waterlogged convent library, she comes across a fabulous volume of 16 erotic drawings by Giulio Romano, accompanying 16 steamy sonnets by Pietro Aretino. When first published over 4 centuries ago, the Vatican ordered all copies destroyed. This one—now unique—volume has survived. The abbess prevails upon Margot to save the order’s finances by selling the magnificently illustrated erotica discreetly—meaning without the bishop’s knowledge. Margot’s other clandestine project is a middle-aged Italian who is boldly attempting radical measures to save endangered frescoes. She is 29 and available; he, older and married. He shares her sense of mission and soon her bed in this daring story of spiritual longing and earthly desire.