The Cloud That Contained the Lightning by Cynthia Lowen

The Cloud That Contained the Lightning by Cynthia Lowen

Regular price
Checking stock...
Regular price
Checking stock...
Proud to be B-Corp

Our business meets the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. In short, we care about people and the planet.

The feel-good place to buy books
  • Free delivery in Australia
  • Supporting authors with AuthorSHARE
  • 100% recyclable packaging
  • Proud to be a B Corp – A Business for good
  • Buy-back with Ziffit

The Cloud That Contained the Lightning by Cynthia Lowen

Using the character of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, as a jumpingoff point, The Cloud That Contained the Lightning explores the kinds of ethical choices we face as individuals and as a society with respect to the innovations and inventions we pursue. How are our fears, obsessions, prejudices, and cultures manifested in the ways we apply new technologies, such as the splitting of the atom? What were the attitudes that resulted in such a destructive invention? What prompted it to be used on a nation suspected to already be defeated?

By weaving together the voices of Oppenheimer, his wife and brother, hibakusha (Japanese for explosion-affected people), and the mythological figures of Cronos and his children, Lowen creates a dialogue out of a vacuum of communication and imagines the kind of exchanges that might have led to a different outcome than the tragedies at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And in an exploration of our tendency for selective amnesia, this collection asks a critical question: How quickly will the forgotten lessons of the past allow us to repeat the tragic chapters of our history?
Cynthia Lowen has an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She was selected for inclusion in Best New Poets 2008 and is a recipient of the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize and a winner of the “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Contest. She served as a screenwriter and producer of the 2011 documentary Bully.

Nikky Finney won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2011 for her collection Head Off & Split. She is the editor of The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (Georgia).
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780820345642
ISBN 10 0820345644
Title The Cloud That Contained the Lightning
Author Cynthia Lowen
Series The National Poetry Series
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher University of Georgia Press
Year published 2013-09-30
Number of pages 80
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.