The Atomic Energy Commission under Nixon

by Glenn Theodore Seaborg

In this revealing book, Nobel Laureate Glenn T. Seaborg tells what it was like to be chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission during the Nixon presidency. As in his two other highly-praised historical books (Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Test Ban and Stemming the Tide: Arms Control in the Johnson Years), Dr. Seaborg draws extensively from his meticulously kept diary, enabling the reader to be a fly on the wall during meetings with Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and other key policy makers. During the Nixon period, the debate over how to deal with the Soviets on nuclear issues and arms control remained central. On the domestic scene, efforts to promote and regulate the growth of a nuclear power industry were complicated by a rising tide of environmental protest. Dr. Seaborg described how the Atomic Energy Commission, shorn of much of the political immunity of its early years, sought to maintain its programs and ultimately its very existence, while besieged by competing pressures from the White