The book is a comparative history of the cities of Richland, in the northwest United States adjacent to the U.S. Department of Energy Hanford Site plutonium production area, and Ozersk, in Russia's southern Ural mountain region.

[2][3] Brown argues that the demands of plutonium production – both the danger of the physical process and the secrecy required in the Cold War context – led both US and Soviet officials to create "Plutopias," ideal communities to placate resident families in exchange for their cooperation and control over their bodies.

This entailed creating significant state-run welfare programs along with high levels of consumerism in both places.

However, each city witnessed what Brown terms "slow-motion disasters" via the slow, and usually controlled, release of high levels of radiation into their surrounding environments.

[4][5] Plutopia was awarded the 2014 George Perkins Marsh Prize from the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) as the best book in environmental history and the 2014 Ellis W. Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians (OAH).