Nuclear Playground
Cold War History Australian History Young Adult Non-Fiction Political History Environmental History Military History Nuclear History
Stewart Firth’s 1987 first-edition paperback Nuclear Playground is the go-to insider chronicle of Australia’s long, often secret role in the atomic age. In just 176 tightly-written pages, Firth—one of the Pacific’s leading historians—maps every major nuclear footprint on Australian soil and in nearby Moruroa Atoll, from the 1950s British tests at Maralinga and Emu Field to the French blasts that turned the region into a Cold-War chessboard. Vintage photographs, de-classified memos and fold-out maps show exactly where fallout clouds drifted, which roads were built to move bombs, and how servicemen, Indigenous communities and anti-nuclear activists were swept into the story. The result is a fast-moving narrative that reads like an adventure yet is foot-noted like an academic monograph—perfect for young-adult students looking for an accessible primer and for adults who want the deeper political context without wading through a 600-page tome.
What makes this copy collectible is its 1987 Allen & Unwin first printing, complete with the original black-and-white photo plates and end-paper maps that later reprints dropped. It is inscribed (not signed) by a previous owner, adding a personal provenance touch, but the interior is otherwise clean, tight and unmarked—no dog-eared corners, no underlining, just the light cover scuffing you’d expect from a book that has spent three decades changing minds rather than sitting on a shelf. For researchers, vintage-book lovers or anyone building a Pacific-history library, this is the edition that still turns up in footnotes and on university reading lists.
Owning Nuclear Playground puts you ahead of the current surge of interest in Australia’s nuclear past sparked by new museum exhibits, podcasts and de-classified archives. Keywords such as “Australia atomic bomb testing,” “Maralinga radiation legacy,” “Moruroa protests” and “Stewart Firth first edition” consistently rank high in search traffic, so having the 1987 original in very-good condition is both a conversation piece and a smart hedge against rising secondary-market prices. Whether you’re writing a school project, curating a true-war collection, or simply want a gripping real-life cloak-and-radiation story on your nightstand, this copy delivers the facts, the photos and the vintage appeal in one compact package.
Refer to our eBay listing for a full condition report and many more high-quality pictures of this item.
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