1. The Steppe
2. Forty Years of Nuclear Tests
3. The Human Toll
4. The Nation Rises
5. The Swan Song of the Soviet Union
6. Fears in Washington and Alma-Ata
7. A Temporary Nuclear Power
8. The Final Push
9. Project Sapphire and the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction
Program
10. Farewell to Bombs
11. Epilogue: Reimagining the Atomic Steppe
Togzhan Kassenova is senior fellow at the University at Albany, SUNY and a nonresident fellow of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"Atomic Steppe is the untold story of how Kazakhstan rid itself of
nuclear weapons—a remarkable accomplishment for a new nation.
Togzhan Kassenova documents this momentous tale with depth, rigor,
and skill. A revelatory, authoritative account of how the nuclear
arms race went backwards, for once, making the world safer."
—David E. Hoffman, author of The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the
Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy
"Togzhan Kassenova's moving Atomic Steppe offers one of the first
complete English-language accounts of the devastating but
little-known nuclear history of Kazakhstan. The author successfully
blends meticulous research with her own family's personal
experience."
—Sarah Cameron, author of The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and
the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan
"In this wonderful book, Togzhan Kassenova provides an intimate
account of Kazakhstan's nuclear history and an acute analysis of
how it handled its post-Soviet nuclear inheritance. Atomic Steppe
is a deeply researched and profoundly affecting book, which
everyone concerned about the nuclear state of the world should
read."
—David J. Holloway, author of Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union
and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956
"With the sweeping and inspiring Atomic Steppe, Togzhan Kassenova
has unearthed insights new even to those of us who had front-row
seats to Kazakhstan's nuclear saga, telling a story both accurate
and humane. Anyone interested in Eurasia or in health,
environmental, and nuclear challenges should read this engrossing
book."—William Courtney, former US Ambassador to Kazakhstan
"Togzhan Kassenova's remarkable Atomic Steppe offers both a
scholarly and a deeply personal view of the damage that more than
seventy years of nuclear testing have caused to the soil and the
people of this region."—Michael D. Gordin, New York Review of
Books
"The beauty and magic of this brutalized landscape cannot be
erased. Togzhan's book introduces us to the indomitable strength of
itspeople, including those victimized by nuclear testing. They and
we are in her debt."—Michael Krepon, Arms Control Wonk
"Togzhan Kassenova's review of 70 years of Kazakhstan's history in
Atomic Steppe is the definitive study of that country's nuclear
inheritance and its associated internal politics and international
diplomacy."—Laura Kennedy, Foreign Service Journal
"Kassenova's masterpiece not only outlines the importance of
patience, empathy and deftness in diplomacy, but also helps to
recalculate the costs of nuclearization. By compellingly telling
Kazakhstan's nuclear story, the author warns against ignoring the
most important stakeholders of the nuclear non-proliferation
regime: people."—Rabia Akhtar, International Affairs
"Atomic Steppe is a book of two halves that have been fused
together to create a perfect whole. The first half describes the
legacy of Kazakhstan's Soviet nuclear weapon tests. Conversely, the
second part explores Kazakhstan's subsequent independence and the
rugged pathway towards its emergence as a nuclear-free state in the
early 1990s It is completely unique, an absolute must read, and it
will become an atomic classic of our time."—Becky Alexis-Martin,
The Spokesman
"Atomic Steppe has much to inspire in future scholarship. By
decentering the narrative from the United States and USSR and
focusing on the Kazakh perspective, Kassenova brings attention to
stories that have been overshadowed or ignored. In detailing the
diplomatic interactions between the US and Kazakhstan, and the rise
of the anti-nuclear movement in Kazakhstan, Kassenova clearly
demonstrates that the Kazakhs were active agents, rather than
passive bystanders, in shaping their future."—Erin Chávez,
H-Sci-Med-Tech
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