The Wretched Atom is a global history of so-called peaceful nuclear technologies. It asks provocative questions about how we frame these as an escape from environmental pressures and as a path to accelerated economic growth. I describe it as “America’s gamble” in the subtitle because, in the 1950s, the United States offered to share civilian technologies with the rest of the world. It did so before anyone in the US had even built a civilian nuclear power plant, and before having an idea of what “peaceful” nuclear programs might look like. Lots of countries took the US up on that promise, with unexpected consequences!Here’s a disclaimer, though. It’s a global history but it focuses mostly on areas that today are called the Global South. American propaganda targeted the developing world, where people were threatened by famine, drought, and disease. These countries were comprised largely of non-white peoples, many of them former colonies or recently under military occupation (such as Japan). So I’m very interested in the perceived racial dimensions of nuclear technology. I explore the embrace of nuclear technology in large and populous former colonies such as India and Brazil, but also smaller ones such as Ghana and other African states. I focus a lot on the period from decolonization, in the 1950s and 1960s, to the emergence of the Middle East and South Asia as flashpoints of concern about nuclear weapons, in the 1970s and 1980s.What do I mean by nuclear technology? That part is complicated. Perhaps surprisingly, for countries of the developing world, it often did not mean nuclear power plants. The US and other nuclear weapons states promised to cure diseases, produce new foods, and make deserts bloom. In practice, it meant launching programs on mutation plant breeding, food and grain irradiation, water treatment plants, and more. In other words, these were technologies that utilized materials from reactors, and were not reactors themselves.It turns out, though, that most countries wanted electric power plants, not just agricultural applications. That became a bone of contention, especially as critics pointed out that it seemed like a familiar colonial relationship, with “white” atomic energy aimed at electricity generation and “colored” atomic energy aimed at agriculture and medicine.One of the themes of The Wretched Atom is the “cornucopian” promise of atomic energy. This is a term used a lot in the 1970s by those who wanted to harness technology to increase food production, mitigate environmental problems, and cure diseases. It hearkens back to an image from ancient Greece, the horn of plenty. What I’m trying to show is how the cornucopian promise started out as a powerful propaganda tool but then was adopted by many different political actors around the world for a variety of purposes. Sometimes that purpose was to achieve energy independence. Sometimes it was to modernize the economy. Sometimes it was to hide bomb programs.