“The Beginning or the End” was a B movie about the A bomb, released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in February, 1947. It promised to disclose what it called “the biggest, best-kept secret in the history of the world – the men, the magic, the machines behind the world’s strongest force – the atom bomb.” The movie was, the studio declared in all caps with exclamation points "FACTUAL! AUTHENTIC!”

Well, not quite. Because a movie set in motion by scientists wanting the world to know the truth was taken over by the military and the White House needing the world to believe a lie. How that happened is the business that occupies Greg Mitchell in his twelfth book, The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood – and America – learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. It’s not just a great yarn with some surprising participants, it’s also an urgent warning about secrecy, manipulation and suppression.

Those are frequent topics in Greg Mitchell’s oeuvre. I had the pleasure of interviewing Greg eight years ago this week for a related book, his important expose Atomic Cover-Up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki and the Greatest Movie Never Made. Among GREG’s earlier books, two fascinating looks at politics in California. The Campaign of the Century, about Upton Sinclair’s radical campaign for Governor in 1934, which won the Goldsmith Book Prize, and Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady, about Richard Nixon’s redbaiting campaign for the Senate against Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950.