Jon Else Signs Frenchman Flat at Vroman's in Pasadena

In 1957, the military set off a 37-kiloton atomic bomb nicknamed "Priscilla" over a mock town built on a dry lakebed in Nevada. That lakebed was Frenchman Flat, and it gives Jon Else's new book its title. Else is coming to Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena on Monday, September 28 to talk about Frenchman Flat: The Rise and Fall of Atomic Bombs with historian Diana Kormos Buchwald, then sign copies. If you're sorting through things to do in Los Angeles on a weeknight, a serious history talk at Southern California's oldest independent bookstore is a good pick.

The book

Else follows Priscilla from its origins to its brief life in the Cold War and the mess it left behind. He uses that one bomb as a way into the whole American nuclear program, from wartime Los Alamos to 1992, when the US and the Soviet Union stopped testing.

Two stories run side by side. One is the push to build ever bigger weapons. The other is the fight to ban testing them. Along the way the book covers megaton physics, the part private industry played, the Cuban Missile Crisis and some near misses that got far less press. It also draws on testimony from scientists, doctors, test-site workers, ranchers and families who lived downwind of the blasts.

The timing is pointed. Arms control treaties between the US and Russia keep lapsing, and the book argues that avoiding nuclear war so far has come down to deterrence, diplomacy and a fair amount of luck.

Who's talking

Else is a documentary filmmaker whose film The Day After Trinity, about J. Robert Oppenheimer, was nominated for an Oscar. Buchwald is a historian of science at Caltech and runs the Einstein Papers Project, so expect the conversation to get into the physicists as people, not just the hardware. Caltech is a short drive up the road, which makes her a natural partner for a Pasadena event.

Practical info

The listing runs from 7 PM to 9 PM, which leaves time for questions and a signing line afterward. Vroman's is at 695 E Colorado Blvd in Pasadena. The source listing doesn't give a price, so check with the store before you go. Old Pasadena and the Playhouse District both have public garages within a few blocks, and metered spots line Colorado Boulevard, so give yourself a few minutes to park.

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