Author: Greg Mitchell

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

Just a quick, vital, scary, news flash, thanks to the new special issue, “The New Nuclear Age,” from venerable Scientific American, dated December 1 but just posted online. The heading at the top of the site warns: “The U.S. is beginning an ambitious, controversial reinvention of its nuclear arsenal. The project comes with incalculable costs and unfathomable risks.”

Rather than summarize the separate articles, I will merely excerpt from their editorial, which hits the hot spots. Note: My award-winning PBS film Atomic Cover-up is now available for watching at their site for free, 27 minutes. And companion book here. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for free.

Continue reading “The ‘Unfathomable Risks’ of the New US Nuclear Build-up”

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

I was pleased on Sunday to find The New Yorker online posting at the top of its site a massive Q & A that finds Masha Gesssen interviewing one of my longtime mentors and heroes, Robert Jay Lifton, at age 97. We first met exactly 40 years ago when, as the editor of Nuclear Times magazine, I coaxed him into writing a piece for us. I knew his work from his National Book Award winner on Hiroshima survivors, Death in Life, and then Nazi Doctors. A few years later he hired me to help run his Center for Human Survival in NYC and we also began a long annual tradition of attending baseball games between my Mets and his boyhood hometown (Brooklyn now L.A.) Dodgers.

Oh, we then co-authored numerous articles and a classic bestseller Hiroshima in America in 1995 – with brilliant sections on Oppenheimer and Truman, and a few years later the acclaimed Who Owns Death?, on capital punishment in the U.S. (feel free to order either ot them). We co-wrote pieces for more than a dozen publications, ranging from TV Guide to The New York Times. I started attending his famous Wellfleet gatherings each autumn. Remained friends and writing partners ever since – also attended several Beethoven concerts – and he is still going strong at 97, with yet another new book, Surviving Our Catastrophes, which inspired the New Yorker piece.

Continue reading “Robert Jay Lifton On Nuclearism and Oppenheimerism”

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

I revealed that this was in the works awhile back, but now happy to report that my recent award-winning film “Atomic Cover-up” has just been launched by PBS via their national main web site (PBS.org) and all of their apps for phones, Apple TV etc. It will also begin appearing over PBS stations this weekend, in different areas on different nights. This is the “short” version of the film (27 minutes) which focuses on the American side of the story, but you can also find the 52-minute feature, see below. The companion book of the same name is still available, of course, as a paperback and e-book.

Watch the film via PBS site link above or here:

This means that in my late-career switch to film, all three of my docs have come to PBS since 2022, the other two being “The First Attack Ads: Hollywood vs. Upton Sinclair” and “The Memorial Day Massacre.”

Continue reading “Atomic Cover-up Arrives from PBS”

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

Continuing a series begun earlier this week, as we look back 61 years this week to the gravest nuclear crisis of our era, involving JFK, Castro, and Soviet missiles in Cuba. The below is an excerpt from my 2016 bestseller, The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall, which among other things revealed the Kennedy White House trying to kill, that same autumn, one of the most important TV specials ever, from NBC, documenting a perilous underground passage to freedom.

Note: As I have long said, U.S. nuclear “first-use” or “first-strike” policy remains in effect today, as dangers in the Middle East proliferate this month….

Continue reading “61 Years Ago Today: JFK Prepares Cuban Crisis Speech — And Discovers Loose Control of Our Own Nukes”

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

Part II of Our Look Back at Nuclear Terror During Cuban Missile Crisis

Continuing a series begun earlier this week, as we look back 61 years this week to the beginnings of the gravest nuclear crisis of our era, involving JFK, Castro, and Soviet missiles in Cuba. The below is an excerpt from my 2016 bestseller, The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall, which among other things revealed the Kennedy White House trying to kill, that same autumn, one of the most important TV specials ever, from NBC, documenting an astounding underground passage to freedom.

Note: As I have long said, U.S. nuclear “first-use” policy remains in effect today, as dangers in the Middle East proliferate this month….

Continue reading “JFK vs. Curtis LeMay: Nuclear Terror During Cuban Missile Crisis”

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

Even while still doing good business in theaters, Barbie, one half of “Barbenheimer,” started streaming several weeks ago. Now we learn that Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer will final arrive for home viewing on November 21.

It will stream over Amazon Prime, Apple + and Vudu, among other services, and you can already order the DVD and Blu-Ray versions, with these promised extras, three hours of added viewing:

Continue reading “Oppenheimer Starts Streaming (and ‘Extras’ Arrive) in November”