Catch-22 with radiation. Area 51 meets Dr. Strangelove. Except it really happened. The Atomic Times is the absolutely insane, incredibly f*cked-up, but true, eyewitness story of what happened in 1956 on a tiny island in the South Pacific when over 1600 young soldiers (including me) were turned into atomic guinea pigs by the US Army. We were sent there to “observe” this nuclear test series, called Operation Redwing. Wearing only T-shirts and shorts and without any other protective gear while Army brass and nuclear scientists wore Hazmat suits, we were exposed to radiation and fallout. Operation Redwing, the biggest and baddest of America's atmospheric nuclear weapons test series, mixed saber rattling with mad science, while overlooking the cataclysmic human, geopolitical and ecological effects. But mostly, it just messed with guys' heads. Major Maxwell, who put Safety First, Second and Third. Except when he didn't. Berko, the wise-cracking Brooklyn Dodgers fan forced to cope with the H-bomb and his mother's cookies. Tony, who thought military spit and polish plus uncompromising willpower made him an exception. Carl Duncan, who clung to his girlfriend's photos and a dangerous secret. Major Vanish, who did just that. In THE ATOMIC TIMES, Michael Harris welcomes readers into the U.S. Army's nuclear family where the F-words were Fallout and Fireball. In a distinctive narrative voice, Harris describes his H-bomb year with unforgettable imagery and insight into the ways isolation and isotopes change men for better—and for worse. A New York Times bestseller and a Pulitzer Prize nominee, THE ATOMIC TIMES was originally published in hardcover by Random House. "A gripping memoir leavened by humor, loyalty and pride of accomplishment. A tribute to the resilience, courage and patriotism of the American soldier." —Henry Kissinger "Harris' frank and disturbing descriptions of the criminally irresponsible proceedings on Eniwetok, and the physical and mental pain he and others endured, constitute shocking additions to atomic history. Amazingly enough, given his ordeal, Harris remains healthy." --Booklist "An entertaining read in the bloodline of Catch-22, Harris achieves the oddest of victories: a funny, optimistic story about the H-bomb. Harris uses a chatty, dead-pan voice that highlights the horrifying absurdity of life on the island: the use of Geiger counters to monitor scrambled eggs' radiation level, three-eyed fish swimming in the lagoon, corroded, permanently open windows that fail to keep out the radioactive fall-out and men whose toenails glow in the dark." --Publisher's Weekly From the author: Three-eyed fish swimming in the lagoon. Men whose toenails glow in the dark. Operation Redwing where the F words were Fallout and Fireball. In 1956, I was an army draftee sent to the Marshall Islands to watch 17 H-bomb tests. An "observer," the Army called it. In plain English: a human guinea pig. I knew at the time that the experience could make a fascinating book, and I wrote a novel based on it while I was still there. The problem was that Eniwetok was a security post. There were signs everywhere impressing on us that the work going on (I mopped floors, typed, filed requisitions and wrote movie reviews for the island newspaper “All the news that fits we print”) was Top Secret. “What you do here, what you see here, what you hear here, when you leave here leave it here.” I was afraid they would confiscate the manuscript if they found it but a buddy who left Eniwetok before I did concealed the pages in his luggage. When he got back to the States, he mailed those pages to my father so I had what turned out to be a very rough draft. What was wrong with the book? Let me count the ways. I didn’t know how to write action, plot and character. I did know how to leave out everything interesting that was happening around me. Back in the States after my discharge, I thought about writing Version #2 but for ten years, I had nightmares about the H-bomb almost every night. I survived the radiation (unlike some of my friends), but the memories were also a formidable foe. I tried to forget and more or less succeeded. My perspective gradually changed over the years and I began to remember what I had tried to forget: We were told we had to wear high density goggles during the tests to avoid losing our sight but the shipment of goggles never arrived—the requisition was cancelled to make room for new furniture for the colonel's house. We were told we had to stand with our backs to the blast—again to prevent blindness. But the first H-bomb ever dropped from a plane missed its target, and the detonation took place in front of us and our unprotected eyes. Servicemen were sent to Ground Zero wearing only shorts and sneakers and worked side by side with scientists dressed in RadSafe suits. The exposed military men developed severe radiation burns and many died. The big breakthrough came when enough years had passed and I had overcome the anger and the self-pity resulting from the knowledge that I and the men who served with me had been used as guinea pigs in a recklessly dangerous and potentially deadly experiment. At last I had the perspective to understand my nuclear year in its many dimensions and capture the tragedy and the black humor that came along with 17 H-bomb explosions. In addition, certain significant external realities had changed. Top Secret documents about Operation Redwing had been declassified. I learned new details about the test known as Tewa: the fallout lasted for three days and the radiation levels exceeded 3.9 Roentgens, the MPE (Maximum Permissible Exposure). Three ships were rushed to Eniwetok to evacuate personnel but were ordered back after the military raised the MPE to 7. That, they reasoned, ensured everyone's safety. I made contact with other atomic veterans who told me about their own experiences and in some cases sent me copies of letters written to their families during the tests. As we talked, we also laughed: about officers who claimed Eniwetok was a one year paid vacation; about the officer who guarded the political purity of the daily island newspaper by deleting "pinko propaganda," including a speech by President Eisenhower. By now, Ruth knew the material almost as well as I did and provided crucial perspective and detailed editing expertise. At last, I was able to pull all the strands together. After 50 years, I was able write the book I had wanted to in the beginning. Having struggled to write a memoir for so long and having been asked for advice by others contemplating writing a memoir, I can pass along a bit of what I learned along the way. Make sure you have enough distance from the experience to have perspective on what happened. Exposure to radiation and the resulting reactions—anger, terror, incredulity—produce powerful emotions that take time to process. Figure out how to use (or keep away) from your own intense feelings. In the case of the H-Bomb tests, anger and self-pity were emotions to stay away from. So was the hope of somehow getting “revenge.” Sometimes the unexpected works. For me, finding humor in a tragic situation— the abject military incompetence in planning and executing the H-Bomb tests—freed my memory and allowed me to write about horrific experiences. Figure out (most likely by trial and error) how much or how little of yourself you want to reveal. Keywords: memoir, veterans, H-bomb, US Army, black humor, dark humor, military memoir, nuclear bombs, radiation, fission, fusion, fallout, danger, suspense, atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, H-bomb, South Pacific, Eniwetok, Marshall Islands

OPERATION REDWING: Catch 22 With Nukes When everything that COULD go wrong, DID go wrong. Cherokee is the absolutely insane, incredibly f*cked-up, but true, eyewitness story of what happened on a tiny island in the South Pacific when over 1600 young soldiers (including me) were turned into atomic guinea pigs by the US Army. Cherokee was one of 17 nuclear blasts in the 1956 United States H-bomb test series, Operation Redwing. A New York Times bestseller, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by its hardcover publisher, Random House,THE ATOMIC TIMES: My H-Bomb Year at the Pacific Proving Ground is available at GooglePlay in an ebook edition. [CODENAME: CHEROKEE is a 1500 word excerpt.] "THE ATOMIC TIMES is a gripping memoir of the first H-bomb tests by one of the small groups of young servicemen stationed at Ground Zero on Eniwetok Atoll. Leavened by humor, loyalty and pride of accomplishment, this book is also a tribute to the resilience, courage and patriotism of the American soldier." --Henry Kissinger "Harris' frank and disturbing descriptions of the criminally irresponsible proceedings on Eniwetok, and the physical and mental pain he and others endured, constitute shocking additions to atomic history. Amazingly enough, given his ordeal, Harris remains healthy." --Booklist "An entertaining read in the bloodline of Catch-22, Harris achieves the oddest of victories: a funny, optimistic story about the H-bomb. Harris uses a chatty, dead-pan voice that highlights the horrifying absurdity of life on the island: the use of Geiger counters to monitor scrambled eggs' radiation level, three-eyed fish swimming in the lagoon, corroded, permanently open windows that fail to keep out the radioactive fall-out and men whose toenails glow in the dark." --Publisher's Weekly Keywords: memoir, veterans, H-bomb, US Army, army, soldier, military memoir, nuclear bombs, radiation, danger, fission, fusion, fallout, black humor, suspense, atom bomb, hydrogen bomb, H Bomb, South Pacific, Eniwetok, Marshall Islands, detonation, explosions, Oceania, dark humor, bullying

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! The Beatles, Ed Sullivan and the Author Ed first learns I have written a book when I hand him a finished manuscript. Naively, I imagine he'll be flattered, but when he reads it, he blows his stack and stops speaking to me. He's furious. I am revealing more about him, more backstage gossip and more details about the inner workings of the show than he wants made public. Fortunately for me and for Always On Sunday, Ed simmers down eventually and decides my unauthorized biography is "magnificent." He promotes it in his newspaper column, in interviews and in joint television appearances with me. Ed helps turn the book he initially hated into a national bestseller. During my 11 years on the Sullivan show, no one created more excitement than the Beatles. February 7, 1964: Kennedy Airport. Their first trip to the United States. The screaming fans! The haircuts! The sassy answers! Welcome to New York! The entire country focuses on this place and these young men. Including me. I am meeting their plane. A CBS public relations executive for years. Now the network's press representative on "The Ed Sullivan Show." Ed was warned not to sign the Beatles: "You're crazy! No British group has ever made it big in this country." A month before they arrive, they are still unknown in America. Every reporter I contact turns down my invitation to go with me to JFK. Two weeks later, "I Want To Hold Your Hand" rockets to the top of the charts. Beatlemania crosses the Atlantic, and I am besieged by thousands of ticket requests. Reporters plead to join me at JFK. On February 14, I greet the Beatles again, this time in Miami for a second Sullivan show. I do my best to stay out of the way but, thanks to papparazzi determined to cash in on every shot of the Fab Four, I appear in photos published around the world (including the NY Post). In the captions I am called a Beatle, a case of mistaken identity I still laugh about with my wife, best-selling novelist Ruth Harris. When I return to New York, Ed searches for me backstage. One stagehand is impressed. "Ed must really like you," he says. "You've only worked for him for four years, and he already knows your name." Ed And The Celebrities Who Loved Him -- Or Not! Why did Frank Sinatra take out an ad saying, "Ed, you're sick, sick, sick."? You'll find out in Always On Sunday. Why did Mary Tyler Moore sue "The Ed Sullivan Show"? You'll find out in Always On Sunday. Why did CBS cancel Bob Dylan's appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" -- against Ed's wishes? You'll find out in Always On Sunday. Elvis' fans kissed him where? Ed was stunned when Elvis explained. What did Elvis say? You'll find out in Always On Sunday. Always On Sunday was originally published in hardcover by Meredith Press and in mass market paperback by NAL. Keywords: Beatles, Sinatra, Elvis, Ed Sullivan, television, 1960s, 20th Century, rock n roll, Memphis, celebrities, memoir, baby boomer, showbiz, singers, dancers, performers

"A riveting narrative of the Atomic Age--from X-rays and Marie Curie to the Nevada Test Site and the 2011 meltdown in Japan--written by the prizewinning and bestselling author of Rocket Men. Radiation is a complex and paradoxical concept: staggering amounts of energy flow from seemingly inert rock and that energy is both useful and dangerous. While nuclear energy affects our everyday lives--from nuclear medicine and food irradiation to microwave technology--its invisible rays trigger biological damage, birth defects, and cellular mayhem. Written with a biographer's passion, Craig Nelson unlocks one of the great mysteries of the universe in a work that is both tragic and triumphant. From the end of the nineteenth century through the use of the atomic bomb in World War II to the twenty-first century's confrontation with the dangers of nuclear power, Nelson illuminates a pageant of fascinating historical figures: Enrico Fermi, Marie and Pierre Curie, Albert Einstein, FDR, Robert Oppenheimer, and Ronald Reagan, among others. He reveals many little-known details, including how Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler transformed America from a country that created light bulbs and telephones into one that split atoms; how the most grotesque weapon ever invented could realize Alfred Nobel's lifelong dream of global peace; how emergency workers and low-level utility employees fought to contain a run-amok nuclear reactor, while wondering if they would live or die. Brilliantly fascinating and remarkably accessible, The Age of Radiance traces mankind's complicated and difficult relationship with the dangerous power it discovered and made part of civilization."--Publisher information.

One of the first applications of the atomic bomb after Nuclear War I was to serve as the trigger for much more powerful hydrogen bombs. The explosion of an atom bomb emits nuclear radiation, heat energy, and photons. These emissions compress fusion fuel to thermonuclear conditions. From 1945 to 1949, the United States had a monopoly on nuclear weapons until August 29, 1949, when the USSR exploded its first nuclear device. Edward Teller was already actively working on the design of hydrogen bombs, but J. Robert Oppenheimer opposed these efforts. It was President Harry S. Truman who approved the US program to design, build, and test hydrogen bombs. Meanwhile, the USSR had been secretly working on nuclear weapons since 1941, with extensive help from several spies, including Klaus Fuchs. Both the United States and the USSR achieved early success with hydrogen bombs, as was demonstrated by hundreds of test explosions that spread radioactive fallout around the entire Earth. It was the US BRAVO test of a huge hydrogen explosive device on March 1, 1954, that brought matters to a conclusion. The radioactive fallout proved to be lethal over thousands of square miles. The result was an international ban on testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere (1963). However, the Wizards of Armageddon were busily preparing to fight, and maybe win, future wars fought with hydrogen bombs. These plans included risky maneuvers with live hydrogen bombs on planes, submarines, and other mobile devices. Accidents happened, and many hydrogen bombs were lost, blown apart, or simply abandoned. The absolute worst aspect of hydrogen bomb explosions is global ecocide. The explosions are so powerful they harm the ozone layer and ignite huge fires on Earth that darken the skies. The latter was termed nuclear winter by Carl Sagan. The conclusion of this book is very simple. All hydrogen bombs should be banned, forever

The hydrogen test-bomb Bravo, dropped on the Marshall Islands in 1954, had enormous consequences for the Rongelap people. Anthropologists Barbara Rose Johnston and Holly Barker provide incontrovertible evidence of physical and financial damages to individuals and cultural and psycho-social damages to the community through use of declassified government documents, oral histories and ethnographic research, conducted with the Marshallese community within a unique collaborative framework. Their work helped produce a $1 billion award by the Nuclear Claims Tribunal and raises issues of bioethics, government secrecy, human rights, military testing, and academic activism. The report, reproduced here with accompanying materials, should be read by everyone concerned with the effects of nuclear war and is an essential text for courses in history, environmental studies, bioethics, human rights, and related subjects.

Domination and Resistance illuminates the twin themes of superpower domination and indigenous resistance in the central Pacific during the Cold War, with a compelling historical examination of the relationship between the United States and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. For decision makers in Washington, the Marshall Islands represented a strategic prize seized from Japan near the end of World War II. In the postwar period, under the auspices of a United Nations Trusteeship Agreement, the United States reinforced its control of the Marshall Islands and kept the Soviet Union and other Cold War rivals out of this Pacific region. The United States also used the opportunity to test a vast array of powerful nuclear bombs and missiles in the Marshalls, even as it conducted research on the effects of human exposure to radioactive fallout. Although these military tests and human experiments reinforced the US strategy of deterrence, they also led to the displacement of several atoll communities, serious health implications for the Marshallese, and widespread ecological degradation. Confronted with these troubling conditions, the Marshall Islanders utilized a variety of political and legal tactics—petitions, lawsuits, demonstrations, and negotiations—to draw American and global attention to their plight. In response to these indigenous acts of resistance, the United States strengthened its strategic interests in the Marshalls but made some concessions to the islanders. Under the Compact of Free Association (COFA) and related agreements, the Americans tightened control over the Kwajalein Missile Range while granting the Marshallese greater political autonomy, additional financial assistance, and a mechanism to settle nuclear claims. Martha Smith-Norris argues that despite COFA's implementation in 1986 and Washington's pivot toward the Asia-Pacific region in the post–Cold War era, the United States has yet to provide adequate compensation to the Republic of the Marshall Islands for the extensive health and environmental damages caused by the US testing programs.

“POWERFUL! BRILLIANT! SEXY! Written by pros who know how to tell a story.” —Publisher's Weekly Zeb Marlowe, the physically scarred and psychologically maimed survivor of a top secret CIA mind-control experiment, has begun to remake his life when Jai Jai Leland, the beautiful widow of a man who didn't survive, asks him to help her solve the mystery behind her husband's shocking death. Marlowe, struggling to resist his attraction to Jai Jai, is pulled into her dangerous quest despite himself. Together they search for rogue psychiatrist, Dr. Victor Ressid, creator of the diabolical experiments that ravaged Marlowe’s mind and turned ordinary, decent people into terrorists. Meanwhile, stripped of his medical credentials and in thrall to perverse erotic desires, Ressid is consumed by fantasies of revenge against Marlowe, the only subject to defy him. Against an ominous background of escalating global terrorism, Marlowe and Jai Jai must risk their lives to stop a nuclear threat that will destroy the security of the entire world even as they wonder if Marlowe, too, has been turned into a suicide bomber. International in scope, Codename: MK Ultra takes place on the beautiful islands of the Caribbean, in Damascus and Dublin, in the Philippines, Washington, DC, and in an underground torture chamber located on Victor Ressid's secluded private estate located near the Mexico-Belize border. Codename: MK Ultra is based on illegal real-life psychiatric experiments conducted on human subjects by the CIA in American and Canadian universities. “Thrills! Suspense! Terror! I dare you to put it down.” —Bob Mayer, bestselling author

“POWERFUL! BRILLIANT! SEXY! Written by a pro who knows how to tell a story.” —Publisher's Weekly New 2022 edition. Expanded. Revised. Updated. When Dr. Gavin Ryder defies the medical establishment to create a revolutionary new treatment, he accepts a daunting challenge from a power-mad billionaire, and turns a depraved Royal Prince into a political powerhouse. Success brings Gavin the blessings of fame and fortune, and access to the closely-guarded secrets of high government officials — until he finds himself trapped in a web of interlocking conspiracies that extend from the White House to the savage docks of Izmir. Forced to risk everything to save his own life, Gavin must trust the beautiful, rich and powerful woman he loved — and betrayed — even as he attracts the attention of an elite CIA kill team. Set in the turbulent 1960's, The Ryder Dossier takes place in New York and Washington, a modest fishing village on the Turkish Riviera, an opera house in Vienna, a potentate's palace on a private island in the Mediterranean, and aboard Lydia, the world's most beautiful yacht. “One of the best books I've ever read! If I could give it 10 stars, I would. It's that good!!!” —Amazon review “Sex, greed, ambition and murder — what's not to like? Great!” —Mark Chisnell, author of The Defector Also by NYT bestselling author R.A. Harris: MK-ULTRA, A CIA Cold War Thriller, is based on real-life psychiatric experiments conducted by the CIA in American and Canadian universities. “Delivers the goods: thrills, suspense, terror! I dare you to put it down!" --Bob Mayer, bestselling author of AREA 51