CODENAME CHEROKEE: An excerpt from NYT bestseller, THE ATOMIC TIMES: My H-Bomb Year at the Pacific Proving Ground by Michael Harris
About this ebook
When everything that COULD go wrong, DID go wrong.
Cherokee is the absolutely insane, incredibly f*cked-up, but true, eyewitness story of what happened on a tiny island in the South Pacific when over 1600 young soldiers (including me) were turned into atomic guinea pigs by the US Army.
Cherokee was one of 17 nuclear blasts in the 1956 United States H-bomb test series, Operation Redwing.
A New York Times bestseller, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by its hardcover publisher, Random House,THE ATOMIC TIMES: My H-Bomb Year at the Pacific Proving Ground is available at GooglePlay in an ebook edition. [CODENAME: CHEROKEE is a 1500 word excerpt.]
"THE ATOMIC TIMES is a gripping memoir of the first H-bomb tests by one of the small groups of young servicemen stationed at Ground Zero on Eniwetok Atoll. Leavened by humor, loyalty and pride of accomplishment, this book is also a tribute to the resilience, courage and patriotism of the American soldier." --Henry Kissinger
"Harris' frank and disturbing descriptions of the criminally irresponsible proceedings on Eniwetok, and the physical and mental pain he and others endured, constitute shocking additions to atomic history. Amazingly enough, given his ordeal, Harris remains healthy." --Booklist
"An entertaining read in the bloodline of Catch-22, Harris achieves the oddest of victories: a funny, optimistic story about the H-bomb. Harris uses a chatty, dead-pan voice that highlights the horrifying absurdity of life on the island: the use of Geiger counters to monitor scrambled eggs' radiation level, three-eyed fish swimming in the lagoon, corroded, permanently open windows that fail to keep out the radioactive fall-out and men whose toenails glow in the dark." --Publisher's Weekly
Keywords: memoir, veterans, H-bomb, US Army, army, soldier, military memoir, nuclear bombs, radiation, danger, fission, fusion, fallout, black humor, suspense, atom bomb, hydrogen bomb, H Bomb, South Pacific, Eniwetok, Marshall Islands, detonation, explosions, Oceania, dark humor, bullying
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About the author
Michael Harris’s highly acclaimed memoir, THE ATOMIC TIMES: My H-Bomb Year at the Pacific Proving Ground, is based on his experiences as an army draftee during Operation Redwing, codename for the 17 U.S. H-Bomb tests in 1956.
Michael began a novel when he was still stationed in the Pacific. It took five decades for many of the Top Secret documents to be declassified and for him to realize he wanted to write a memoir. The result was THE ATOMIC TIMES.
“Catch-22 with radiation!”
“Area 51 meets Dr. Strangelove!”
“A gripping memoir leavened by humor, loyalty and pride of accomplishment. A tribute to the resilience, courage and patriotism of the American soldier.” —Henry Kissinger
After the army, Michael spent many years as a public relations executive at CBS, eleven of them on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” In addition to welcoming the Beatles at the airport on their first trip to the United States, he is the author of ALWAYS ON SUNDAY: An Inside View of Ed Sullivan, the Beatles, Elvis, Sinatra & Ed’s Other Guests, the bestselling biography of Ed Sullivan.
THE ATOMIC TIMES and ALWAYS ON SUNDAY are available in a Boxed Set: 20th Century Memoirs: Face to Face with the Beatles and the Bomb
He is married to New York Times bestselling novelist, Ruth Harris. Together, they co-authored two bestsellers, HOOKED, A Thriller and BRAINWASHED, A Thriller.
