Kate Evans, 'Thank you Greenham' and Joseph Siracusa, 'A Very Short Introduction to Nuclear Weapons'

IssueSeptember 2008
Review by Gabriel Carlyle , Andrea Needham

Kate Evans’ Thank you Greenham (Laughing Moon Press; 2008;ISBN 978-0956006103; 100pp; £7) is an account of her visits to Greenham in the early ’80s, with a particular stress on “how difficult it was to be a part-time activist”.

Interesting, it’s often hard to read: it’s a very honest account, brutally so at times. The experience seems to have damaged the author emotionally, yet she still manages to make the book a positive read, looking at Greenham as part of a wider struggle against oppression and war.

Finally, if you don’t know what the Gromyko plan was, why Libya came clean on its nuclear programme 2004, or whether the “nuclear bomb in a suitcase” beloved of thriller writers is a terrifying reality or a physical impossibility, then Joseph Siracusa’s A Very Short Introduction to Nuclear Weapons (Oxford, 2008; ISBN 978-0199229543, 144pp; £6.99) may be the book for you.

Don’t expect much coverage of the anti-nuclear movement though.

Thank You Greenham launches at 7.45pm on 24 September at Housmans Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX.

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