Books about Fallout from Amazon.com

Using the vivid, poignant and personal stories of the members of a website support group she founded (www.depressionfallout.com), Anne Sheffield, the author of two highly acclaimed books on depression, provides an honest record of what happens to a love relationship once depression enters the picture, and offers solid advice on what the non–depressed partner can do to improve his or her own life and the relationship.

Of the millions of people who suffer from a depressive illness, few suffer in solitude. They draw the people they love – spouses, parents, children, lovers, friends – into their illness. In her first book, How You Can Survive When They're Depressed, Anne Sheffield coined the phrase 'depression fallout' to describe the emotional toll on the depressive's family and close friends who are unaware of their own stressful reactions and needs. She outlined the five stages of depression fallout (confusion, self–doubt, demoralisation, anger, and the need to escape) and explained that these reactions are a natural result of living with a depressed person.

One of the most overlooked yet thoroughly damaged lots of depression fallout victims, she says, are the toddlers and children of depressed mothers. Children with behavioral problems at home and in school may be struggling for attention they don't get from a depressed parent. She writes, "Although a depressed parent of either sex creates problems for a child, the bulk of the research on parental depression and its effects on young children has zeroed in on the mother, because she is the center of a young child's existence: the primary nurturer, teacher, and emotional and social contact. Ideally, a mother is a good listener, communicator, and problem solver; authoritative without being authoritarian; warm and consistent; and tolerant and patient. Mothers in the grip of depression are often just the opposite: harsh, critical, impatient, irritable, and unaffectionate. And because one in every four women will suffer serious depression at some time in her life--more often than not, right in the middle of her prime childbearing years of twenty-five to thirty-five--the research findings are applicable to a very substantial number of children."

Without being flippant, Sheffield inserts bits of humor into the book. She describes what she calls "sticky-flypaper depressives" as those who blame themselves for everything and anything that has ever gone wrong, whether it be a relationship, or, as one psychiatrist recalled from one patient's session, "the bad Broadway season of 1947." She also gives a thorough analysis of the many causes of depression, illustrates the five stages of depression fallout, and considers the benefits and downfalls of psychotherapy and how a fallout victim may be affected by it. Sheffield offers reassuring advice on how fallout victims can defuse stress and rebuild their self-esteem and social lives, abundant resources and references for support groups and informational organizations, and an extensive list of medications commonly used for the treatment of mental disorders. No matter what the age or relationship of the fallout victim, How You Can Survive When They're Depressed will prove to be a much-needed dose of sympathy..
Price: $3.73 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"Kenneth Rose's One Nation Underground explores U.S. nuclear history from the bottom up—literally. . . . Rose deserves credit for not trivializing this period of our history, as so many retrospectives of the Cold War era have tended to do."
—Journal of Cold War Studies

"Important . . . One Nation Underground is an elegant account of the issues involved in the nuclear age."
—Pacific Northwest Quarterly

"This is a fine compilation of a massive amount of research, well founded in the existing literature, and presented in a readable narrative."
—Journal of Illinois History

"A readable short history of the fallout shelters and the broader political debate over civil defense. . . . Mr. Rose is a good storyteller, and One Nation Underground is engagingly writen, with an array of evocative photgraphs."
—The Wall Street Journal

"Rose writes well, with a good eye for the telling phrase and revealing example."—Journal of Social History

For the half-century duration of the Cold War, the fallout shelter was a curiously American preoccupation. Triggered in 1961 by a hawkish speech by John F. Kennedy, the fallout shelter controversy—"to dig or not to dig," as Business Week put it at the time—forced many Americans to grapple with deeply disturbing dilemmas that went to the very heart of their self-image about what it meant to be an American, an upstanding citizen, and a moral human being.

Given the much-touted nuclear threat throughout the 1960s and the fact that 4 out of 5 Americans expressed a preference for nuclear war over living under communism, what's perhaps most striking is how few American actually built backyard shelters. Tracing the ways in which the fallout shelter became an icon of popular culture, Kenneth D. Rose also investigates the troubling issues the shelters raised: Would a post-war world even be worth living in? Would shelter construction send the Soviets a message of national resolve, or rather encourage political and military leaders to think in terms of a "winnable" war?

Investigating the role of schools, television, government bureaucracies, civil defense, and literature, and rich in fascinating detail—including a detailed tour of the vast fallout shelter in Greenbriar, Virginia, built to harbor the entire United States Congress in the event of nuclear armageddon—One Nation, Underground goes to the very heart of America's Cold War experience.

As you might expect, the book offers a complete listing of the game's objects, locations, and characters. The screen shots help to illustrate key points while the great illustrations help to set that mixed 1950s/postapocalyptic mood. To cap things off, humorous and helpful tips from "Ol' Slim," the old-time adventurer, are scattered throughout the book. --Michael Ryan.
Price: $39.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]