Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State and Nuclear Pollution
Marilynne Robinson
At the time when Robinson wrote this book, the largest known source of radioactive contamination of the world's environment was a government-owned nuclear plant called Sellafield, not far from Wordsworth's cottage in the Lakes District; one child in sixty was dying from leukemia in the village closest to the plant. The central question of this eloquently impassioned book is: How can a country that we persist in calling a welfare state consciously risk the lives of its people for profit. Mother Country is a 1989 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.
Award History
0 wins · 1 total
| Award | Year | Result | Category / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Book Award for NonfictionMajor | 1989 | Finalist | Secondary source |
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies
This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.
01 Central figures
None extracted with sufficient confidence.
02 Central places
- Sellafield78%
Show lower-confidence suggestions
These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.
- the Lakes District40%
- Wordsworth's cottage36%
03 Suggested argument
A country that calls itself a welfare state should not knowingly risk the lives of its people for profit, as illustrated by radioactive contamination linked to Sellafield.
Model confidence 66%
04 Reading orientation
32 / 100 academicSerious trade
An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.
Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 74%.