Benjamin C. Garrett retired in 2015 from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), where he served in the Laboratory Division, Quantico, Virginia, as the Senior Scientist for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Prior to joining the FBI, he served with the U.S. Army Chemical Corps (1975-78) and spent two decades working on defense, environmental, and intelligence programs.

The history and future of nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) warfare is both complicated and troubling. Garrett, formerly the FBI's senior scientist for weapons of mass destruction, revisits the topic in this second edition, significantly broadening its scope from the first (CH, Jan'08, 45-2385). The updated dictionary is 113 pages longer and contains expanded, updated entries and several new topics. Various weapons, their history and development, and attempts to control their use and proliferation are categorized through a chronology, an extensive bibliography, a lengthened acronyms and abbreviations list, and over 700 A–Z entries. Updates include new entries on Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian intelligence officer who died in 2006 of polonium-210 poisoning in a London hospital; microbial forensics, an expanding field used to analyze bioterrorism incidents; and the Vigo Plant, an army instillation in Vigo, IN, that produced biological weapons in the 1940s…. This second edition is an improvement over the original volume and provides an accessible resource for interested readers. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates and general readers.

• Editor’s Foreword Jon WoronoffPrefaceAcronyms and AbbreviationsChronologyIntroductionTHE DICTIONARYBibliographyAbout the Authors

Benjamin C. Garrett retired in 2015 from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), where he served in the Laboratory Division, Quantico, Virginia, as the Senior Scientist for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Prior to joining the FBI, he served with the U.S. Army Chemical Corps (1975-78) and spent two decades working on defense, environmental, and intelligence programs.

The history and future of nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) warfare is both complicated and troubling. Garrett, formerly the FBI's senior scientist for weapons of mass destruction, revisits the topic in this second edition, significantly broadening its scope from the first (CH, Jan'08, 45-2385). The updated dictionary is 113 pages longer and contains expanded, updated entries and several new topics. Various weapons, their history and development, and attempts to control their use and proliferation are categorized through a chronology, an extensive bibliography, a lengthened acronyms and abbreviations list, and over 700 A–Z entries. Updates include new entries on Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian intelligence officer who died in 2006 of polonium-210 poisoning in a London hospital; microbial forensics, an expanding field used to analyze bioterrorism incidents; and the Vigo Plant, an army instillation in Vigo, IN, that produced biological weapons in the 1940s…. This second edition is an improvement over the original volume and provides an accessible resource for interested readers. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates and general readers.

• Editor’s Foreword Jon WoronoffPrefaceAcronyms and AbbreviationsChronologyIntroductionTHE DICTIONARYBibliographyAbout the Authors