One Damn Thing After Another

The title of this "sort of memoir" is borrowed from Mark Twain's observation that life is "just one damn thing after another." Its author--a professor who taught the history of the Cold War for nearly four decades--originally intended the book's readership to be limited to prospective grandchildren. But the stories within--about the vicissitudes of academic life; 'Sixties protests against the Vietnam War; my brief stint as an intelligence analyst on the CIA's Soviet desk; a subsequent, 15-year career as a department chair and curator at the Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum; summers spent at a Cape Cod cabin and other, international travels (including an arrest in Mexico for terrorism)--may also appeal to a broader audience. As Mark Twain also wrote: "No narrative that tells the facts of a man's life in the man's own words, can be uninteresting." Gregg Herken is the author of five books on nuclear history, including The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington (Knopf, 2014), and Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller (Henry Holt, 2002), a finalist for the 2003 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History.

The title of this "sort of memoir" is borrowed from Mark Twain's observation that life is "just one damn thing after another." Its author--a professor who taught American diplomatic history and the history of the Cold War for nearly four decades--originally intended the book's readership to be limited to prospective grandchildren. But the stories within--about the vicissitudes of academic life at Oberlin, Yale, and a University of California start-up campus; student protests against the Vietnam War at the 1969 March on Washington; a summer internship as an intelligence analyst on the CIA's Soviet desk; a subsequent, 15-year career as chairman of the Department of Space History and Curator of Military Space at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air & Space Museum (including successfully negotiating in Moscow the swap of a nuclear-tipped U.S. missile for its Soviet equivalent); family summers spent at a remote, idyllic Cape Cod cabin, and other, international travels (including an arrest in Mexico for terrorism)--might also appeal to a broader audience. As Mark Twain also wrote: "No narrative that tells the facts of a man's life in the man's own words, can be uninteresting." Gregg Herken is the author of five books on nuclear history, including The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington (Knopf, 2014), and Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller (Henry Holt, 2002), a finalist for the 2003 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History.

Gregg Herken is an Emeritus Professor of American history at the University of California, and a Senior Fellow at Middlebury University's Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California. He graduated with the Pioneer Class of UC Santa Cruz in 1969, and joined the Founding Faculty of the University's newest campus, at Merced, California, in 2003. After receiving a Ph.D. in modern American diplomatic history from Princeton University in 1974, he subsequent taught the history of the Cold War at Oberlin College, Yale University, Caltech, and the University of California, Santa Cruz and Merced. From 1988 to 2003, he was a senior Historian and the Curator of Military Space, as well as Chairman of the Department of Space History at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. He is the author of five books on nuclear history, including The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington (Knopf, 2014), and Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller, a finalist for the 2003 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History.