This was a new room, rich with hope, terrible with strange danger. A dim folk memory had preserved the story of a greater advance: “the winged hound of Zeus” tearing from Prometheus’ liver the price of fire. Was the world ready for the new step forward? Certainly, it will change the world. You have to make laws to fit it. And if plain people did not understand and control it, who would? —Excerpted from James Agee’s cover story, “Atomic Age,” on the dropping of the atom bomb, Time, August 20, 1945
