Here is Aunt Carrie's fascinating account of a nine-year battle in hearing rooms, the news media, and sometimes even the streets, to stop Black Fox's construction. Before it was over, this war would cost her and her husband Robert their entire savings, their nursing home, and almost the family farm. When the money ran out, she took up quilting to raise more.

These stories reveal the way the world has always been made better — by individuals who courageously follow their heart’s inner wisdom. At a moment in history when the tide of events seems determined by faceless governments and corporations, we need these examples of individual action more than ever. “Reading the stories of these women of spirit confirmed my belief that women can overcome the most difficult obstacles and survive. Women of Spirit is another winner for Katherine Martin.” — Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique and Life So Far “My kind of women!” — Gert Boyle, chairman, Columbia Sportswear Company

Contrarian Sooner views of Oklahoma history

This book is a comparative study of two energy policies that illustrates how and why technical fixes in energy policy failed in the United States. In the post-WWII era, the U.S. government forcefully and consistently endorsed the development of civilian nuclear power. It adopted policies to establish the competitiveness of civilian nuclear power far beyond what would have occurred under free-market conditions. Even though synthetic fuel was characterized by a similar level of economic potential and technical feasibility, the policy approach toward synthetic fuel was sporadic and indeterminate. The contrast between the unfaltering faith in nuclear power and the indeterminate attitude toward synthetic fuel raises many important questions. The answers to these questions reveal provocative yet compelling insights into the policy-making process. The author argues that these diverging paths of development can be explained by exploring the dominant government ideology of the time or "ideology of the state" as the sociology literature describes it. The forceful support for nuclear power was a result of a government preoccupied with fighting the Cold War. The U.S. national security planners intentionally idealized and deified nuclear power to serve its Cold War psychological strategy. These psychological maneuverings attached important symbolic meaning to nuclear power. This symbolism, in turn, explains the society-wide enthusiasm. The fabricated myth of the Atomic Age became a self-fulfilling prophecy and ushered in a bandwagon market. On the other hand, a confused, indeterminate, and relatively powerless welfare state stood behind synthetic fuel. The different ideologies of the state explain the government's different attitudes toward nuclear and synfuel endeavors. The overarching discovery is a mode of "belief-based decision-making" in long-term energy planning. This discovery goes against the prevalent assumption of rational choice in social sciences. The author argues that rational-choice assumption is inapplicable because of the extreme long-term nature of energy planning. It is not usually possible to predict the sociopolitical and economic conditions in the distant future. Rational decisions require supporting information, which often includes impossible long-term foresights. One cannot rationally choose between one unknown and another unknown. Pivotal decisions in long-term energy planning must inevitably be belief based, and beliefs are subject to political manipulation and distortions by social mechanisms. Understanding these peculiar but pervasive characteristics of energy business bears important lessons for today's decision making about energy technologies, and the stakes, if anything, are even higher than before. Energy policy communities; historians of the Cold War, American history, and technology; and sociologists would find this book an invaluable resource.

Be inspired by this grassroots civil rights lawyer's quest for democracy, equality, and justice Born in 1947 and raised in rural South Carolina, Lewis Pitts grew up oblivious to the civil rights revolution underway across the country. A directionless white college student in 1968, Pitts committed to military service and was destined for Vietnam. Five years later—after a formative period in which he underwent an intellectual and moral awakening, was discharged as a conscientious objector, and graduated from law school—he embarked on an unlikely forty-year career as a crusading social justice attorney. The Life of a Movement Lawyer: Lewis Pitts and the Struggle for Democracy, Equality, and Justice chronicles how Pitts positively affected thousands of lives and communities, while working in various social movements and then for legal aid. These grassroots efforts included fights to end nuclear proliferation; seeking justice for victims and survivors of the Greensboro Massacre; restarting the local government in Keysville, Georgia; preserving Gullah culture on Daufuskie Island, South Carolina; and ending corruption in Robeson County, North Carolina. Beyond documenting a life well-lived and shedding light on lesser-known activists and movements, Langberg, in this thoroughly researched biography, explores problems that continue to afflict the United States today: poverty, inequality, environmental degradation, racism, police misconduct, voter suppression, child maltreatment, and corporate power. The Life of a Movement Lawyer will energize, inspire, and compel action by those who seek to continue the pursuit of justice for all.

An unprecedented look at nuclear politics in California Vehement, widespread opposition accompanied the rise of the U.S. nuclear industry during the 1960s and 1970s. In Conservation Fallout, John Wills examines one of the most controversial atomic projects of the period: Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s decision to build its premier nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon, a relatively unsettled, biologically rich, and especially scenic part of the central California coastline. Two competing visions of California emerged while the plant underwent construction. Environmentalists used Diablo as a symbol of impending ecological doomsday, while PG&E envisioned it as the model that would usher in a new age of energy production. The Sierra Club almost disbanded over whether to condone or protest the reactor project. Divisions also emerged in the local community as residents and politicians, enticed by the promise of cheap electricity and lucrative tax revenues, found themselves pitted against others who feared the dangers of radiation in their own backyards. The controversy intensified when a fault line was discovered within three miles of the plant. Grassroots groups The Mothers for Peace, a local women’s group, and The Abalone Alliance, a statewide nonviolent direct-action organization, did their utmost to stop the plant from going on-line. In 1979, an Alliance rally in San Francisco attracted 25,000 people, while 40,000 others gathered in San Luis Obispo. During a two-week-long blockade of the Diablo plant in 1981, over 1,900 activists were jailed, the largest arrest in the history of American antinuclear protest. Despite its significance in the history of twentieth-century environmental issues and the continuing debate over the safety of nuclear power, the full story of Diablo Canyon has not been told until now. Wills bases his account on extensive interviews with the individuals involved, as well as on the archives of the Sierra Club, several protest organizations, public agencies, PG&E, and others. The result is an engaging, balanced examination of nuclear politics in California. By focusing on one of the last wild places in the state and its transformation into a major technological center, and on the evolution and strategies of the little-studied grassroots protest groups determined to protect California and resist the spread of nuclear technology, Wills has made a major contribution to our understanding of America’s nuclear age.