Graebner, Norman A. “America, from Client State to World Power: Six Major Transitions in United States Foreign Relations by Paul A. Varg (Book Review).” Pacific Historical Review 60, no. 1 (1991): 129.
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week and the hiring of additional personnel. Between 1949 and 1955 the laboratory’s employees at Sandia increased from 1,742 to 5,752 to make Sandia New Mexico’s largest employer. Presumably for security reasons, Furman does not include a final count of the nuclear weapons in the nation’s stockpile. Although the length of the book is intimidating, it is well written. For valuable background, Furman has made good use of an impressive collection of secondary sources, particularly the first two volumes of the History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, by Richard a Hewlett and his collaborators Oscar Anderson, Jr., and Francis Duncan. She describes the tensions between the civilian AEC, which produced the atomic weapons, and the military which wanted control over the nation’s stockpile of bombs. She also points out the ambivalence of national nuclear policy, which supported development and test-ing of bombs while at the same time proposing international control of atomic weapons and “Atoms for Peace”—commercial development of nuclear power. One theme that Furman does not develop is the potentially intriguing relationship between Sandia and other institutions. Although Sandia was a division of Los Alamos for much of this period, Los Alamos is not a significant element in Furman’s story. Were there tensions between the scientists and the production engineers? Did Los Alamos management resent the growth of Sandia? Although Furman suggests that there were strains in the relationship between Sandia and AT&T, she does not fully explore the transition from university to industry management. Nevertheless, Furman’s history of Sandia is an impressive contribution to our understanding of the early years of the nuclear age.