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**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER****Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize**From one kiss comes a chain reaction – a masterpiece of memoir from the winner of the Baillie Gifford and the Booker prize‘Extraordinary’ Sarah Perry‘Masterpiece’ Colm Tóibín‘Wholly original. I absolutely loved it’ David Nicholls‘A brilliant, brilliant book’ James RebanksBy way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West’s affair, through 1930s nuclear physics, to Flanagan’s father working as a slave labourer near Hiroshima, this chain of events culminates in a young man finding himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river, not knowing if he is to live or to die…‘The strangest and most beautiful memoir I’ve ever read. Magnificent' Tim Winton‘Flanagan’s finest book... A brilliant meditation on the past of one man and the history that coalesced in his existence’ Guardian‘Flanagan’s portrayal of his quiet, brave father and his loving, resilient mother is exquisite…masterful’ Daily Telegraph‘Intimate, beautiful, unsparing and profound' Anna Funder

The Sunday Times bestselling edge-of-your-seat exploration of what would happen in the event of nuclear war, perfect for readers of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.Nuclear war begins with a blip on a radar screen.This is a minute-by-minute account of what comes next.It has to be read to be believed.'A stomach-clenching, multi-perspective, ticking-clock, geopolitical thriller' Forbes'Dangerously plausible – and it reads like a thriller' Sunday Times'These are scenes straight out of Dr Strangelove' TelegraphThere is only one scenario other than an asteroid strike that could end the world as we know it in a matter of hours: nuclear war.Until now, no one outside official circles has known exactly what would happen if a rogue state launched a nuclear missile at the Pentagon. Second by second and minute by minute, these are the real-life protocols that choreograph the end of civilization.Decisions that affect hundreds of millions of lives need to be made within six minutes, based on partial information, in the knowledge that once launched, nothing is capable of halting the destruction.Based on dozens of new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, been privy to the response plans, and taken responsibility for crucial decisions, this is the only account of what a nuclear exchange would look like.Nuclear War is at once a compulsive non-fiction thriller and a powerful argument that we must rid ourselves of these world-ending weapons for ever.'This terrifying book is a must-read for every world leader' Mother Jones'At once methodical and vivid' The Economist'Tells a terrifying story in a devastatingly straightforward way' Guardian* A New York Times bestseller (March 2024) and a Sunday Times bestseller (April 2024). Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2024, the UK's premier annual prize for non-fiction books.

WITH A NEW AFTERWORDThe INSTANT New York Times bestseller Instant Los Angeles Times bestsellerFinalist, Dayton Literary Peace PrizeOne of NPR's Books We LoveOne of Newsweek Staffers' Favorite Books of the YearShortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize“In Nuclear War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen gives us a vivid picture of what could happen if our nuclear guardians fail….Terrifying.”—The Wall Street JournalThere is only one scenario other than an asteroid strike that could end the world as we know it in a matter of hours: nuclear war. And one of the triggers for that war would be a nuclear missile inbound toward the United States.Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These investigations are vital to how we understand the world we really live in—where one nuclear missile will beget one in return, and where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds’ notice with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have.Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made. Nuclear War: A Scenario examines the handful of minutes after a nuclear missile launch. It is essential reading, and unlike any other book in its depth and urgency.

A Times History Book of the Year 2022 From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings ‘the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis’ Daily Telegraph The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation. Max Hastings’s graphic new history tells the story from the viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots and British disarmers. Max Hastings deploys his accustomed blend of eye-witness interviews, archive documents and diaries, White House tape recordings, top-down analysis, first to paint word-portraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev’s Russia and Kennedy’s America; then to describe the nail-biting Thirteen Days in which Armageddon beckoned.Hastings began researching this book believing that he was exploring a past event from twentieth century history. He is as shocked as are millions of us around the world, to discover that the rape of Ukraine gives this narrative a hitherto unimaginable twenty-first century immediacy. We may be witnessing the onset of a new Cold War between nuclear-armed superpowers.To contend with today’s threat, which Hastings fears will prove enduring, it is critical to understand how, sixty years ago, the world survived its last glimpse into the abyss. Only by fearing the worst, he argues, can our leaders hope to secure the survival of the planet.

A warning to humankind from one of the world’s greatest physicists'What drives these pages is the guilty conscience of my profession, theoretical physics. My sole aim is to help avert what seems to me to be the unintended, yet scarcely avoidable, end point of the current politics of the governments we have elected: nuclear war.'The world is rearming and embroiled in endless conflict. The Doomsday Clock has now been set to 85 seconds to midnight, with the risk of nuclear war the highest it has ever been. Why do we always fail to learn from the past?In this urgent book, acclaimed physicist Carlo Rovelli reframes the history of nuclear weapons: from how the atomic bomb was born to why Germany didn't build it and why the US used it, to the narrowly averted disasters of the Cold War and the political brinkmanship careering out of control today.As he grapples with the legacy of his scientific forebears, Rovelli spotlights the true nature of the decisions being made by leaders around the world today. A timely and ardent warning, this searing reckoning with short-sighted politics is essential reading for anyone seeking sanity at our moment of greatest peril.

A groundbreaking history of nuclear weapons across the world, from their invention to the end of the Cold WarHow should we deal with nuclear weapons? The discovery of nuclear fission fundamentally changed the world order. Its power was harnessed, nuclear bombs invented, and the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed. In recurring international crises and calls for arms control, the threat of nuclear war has hung over humanity ever since.David Holloway traces how these weapons shaped the last century, from the US-Soviet arms race to the rivalry between India and Pakistan. Deterrence and intimidation, alliances and war plans, international treaties and organizations have all played their role. At the centre were political leaders—among them Truman, Kennedy, and Reagan, as well as Stalin, Khrushchev, and Gorbachev—who all had their fingers on the nuclear button.This is a global history of these fearsome weapons and our attempts to deal with the consequences of their existence—a story at once fascinating and repellent, of a very dangerous period in our history.

FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE'Monumental and highly readable... by smartly knitting together the past with the present, Zubok brings a prescient and fresh perspective' Financial TimesA sweeping, original history of the Cold War, from an acclaimed historian of the USSRWhy did the Cold War erupt so soon after the Second World War? How did it escalate so rapidly, spanning five continents over six decades? And what led to the spectacular collapse of the Soviet Union? In this comprehensive guide to the most widespread conflict in contemporary history, Vladislav Zubok traces the origins of the Cold War in post-war Europe, through the tumultuous decades of confrontation, to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond.With remarkable clarity and unique perspective, Zubok argues that the Cold War, often seen as an existential battle between capitalist democracy and totalitarian communism, has long been misunderstood. He challenges the popular Western narrative that economic superiority and democratic values led the USA to victory. Instead, he looks beyond the familiar images of East-West rivalry, shining a light on the impact of non-Western actors and placing the war in the context of global decolonization, Soviet weakness and the accidents of history. Here, he interrogates what happens when stability and peace are no longer the default, when treaties are broken and when diplomacy ceases to function.Drawing on years of research and informed by Zubok’s three decades in the USSR followed by three decades in the West, The World of the Cold War paints a striking portrait of a world on the brink.

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER****Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize**From one kiss comes a chain reaction – a masterpiece of memoir from the winner of the Baillie Gifford and the Booker prize‘Extraordinary’ Sarah Perry‘Masterpiece’ Colm Tóibín‘Wholly original. I absolutely loved it’ David Nicholls‘A brilliant, brilliant book’ James RebanksBy way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West’s affair, through 1930s nuclear physics, to Flanagan’s father working as a slave labourer near Hiroshima, this chain of events culminates in a young man finding himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river, not knowing if he is to live or to die…‘The strangest and most beautiful memoir I’ve ever read. Magnificent' Tim Winton‘Flanagan’s finest book... A brilliant meditation on the past of one man and the history that coalesced in his existence’ Guardian‘Flanagan’s portrayal of his quiet, brave father and his loving, resilient mother is exquisite…masterful’ Daily Telegraph‘Intimate, beautiful, unsparing and profound' Anna Funder

'a master class in eyewitness storytelling . . . this gripping narrative chronicles one of history's darkest nightmare moments' - Annie Jacobsen, author of Nuclear War: A ScenarioOn the 80th anniversary of the devastating bombing of Hiroshima, the stories of the hibakusha are more important than ever.The stories of hibakusha - Japanese for atomic bomb survivors - lie at the heart of this compelling minute-by-minute account of 6 August 1945 - the day the world changed forever as the Enola Gay dropped its payload over Hiroshima, ushering in the nuclear age. These survivors and witnesses, now with an average age of over 90, are the last people alive who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in Hiroshima before the bombings. In this heart-stopping account they relay what they experienced on the day the city was obliterated, and what it has been like to live with those memories and scars over the rest of their lives.M. G. Sheftall has spent years personally interviewing survivors who were just adolescents at the time but have lived well into their nineties, allowing him to construct portraits of what Hiroshima was like before the bomb, and how catastrophically its citizens' lives changed in the seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months and years afterwards. Fluent in spoken and written Japanese, his deep immersion in Japanese society has given him unprecedented access to the hibakusha in their waning years. Their trust in him is evident in the personal and traumatic depths they open up for him as he records their stories.The result is a deeply human history of an unfathomable tragedy, which continues to haunt the world today.

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945 unleashed a force as mysterious as it was deadly - radioactivity. In 1946, the United States government created the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) to serve as a permanent agency in Japan with the official mission of studying the medical effects of radiation on the survivors. The next 10 years saw the ABCC's most intensive research on the genetic effects of radiation, and up until 1974 the ABCC scientists published papers on the effects of radiation on ageing, life span, fertility, and disease. This book is a comprehensive history of the ABCC's research on how radiation affected the survivors of the atomic bomb. Arguing that Cold War politics and cultural values fundamentally shaped the work of the ABCC, the author tells the compelling story of a project that raised disturbing questions about the ethical implications of using human subjects in scientific research. How did the politics of the emerging Cold War affect the scientists' biomedical research and findings? How did the ABCC document and publicly present the effects of radiation? Why did the ABCC refuse to provide medical treatment to the survivors?Through a detailed examination of ABCC policies, archival materials, the minutes of committee meetings, newspaper accounts, and interviews with ABCC scientists, Lindee explores how political and cultural interests were reflected in the day-to-day operations of this controversial research programme. Set against a period of conflicting views of nuclear weapons and nuclear power, the book follows the course of a politically-charged research programme and reveals in detail how politics and cultural values can shape the conduct, results, and uses of science.

The late Dr. Michihiko Hachiya was director of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital when the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Though his responsibilities in the appalling chaos of a devastated city were awesome, he found time to record the story daily, with compassion and tenderness. His compelling diary was originally published by the UNC Press in 1955, with the help of Dr. Warner Wells of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who was a surgical consultant to the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission and who became a friend of Dr. Hachiya. In a new foreword, John Dower reflects on the enduring importance of the diary fifty years after the bombing.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author John Hersey's seminal work of narrative nonfiction which has defined the way we think about nuclear warfare. “One of the great classics of the war" (The New Republic) that tells what happened in Hiroshima during World War II through the memories of the survivors of the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city."The perspective [Hiroshima] offers from the bomb’s actual victims is the mandatory counterpart to any Oppenheimer viewing." —GQ Magazine   “Nothing can be said about this book that can equal what the book has to say. It speaks for itself, and in an unforgettable way, for humanity.” —The New York Times   Hiroshima is the story of six human beings who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. John Hersey tells what these six -- a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest -- were doing at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city. Then he follows the course of their lives hour by hour, day by day.The New Yorker of August 31, 1946, devoted all its space to this story. The immediate repercussions were vast: newspapers here and abroad reprinted it; during evening half-hours it was read over the network of the American Broadcasting Company; leading editorials were devoted to it in uncounted newspapers.Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book John Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told. His account of what he discovered about them -- the variety of ways in which they responded to the past and went on with their lives -- is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.

In the spring of 1945 the Allies arrested the physicists they believed had worked on the German nuclear programme during the war. Interned in an English country house, their conversations were secretly recorded. MI6's Operation Epsilon sought to determine how close Nazi Germany had come to building an atomic bomb. It was in this remote setting - Farm Hall, near Cambridge - that the German physicists first heard of the bombing ofHiroshima. August 6 1945 was a night that changed the course of history. The terrible weapon unleashed on Japan caused unprecedented destruction and loss of life. That the Allies had such a weapon at their disposal came as a great shock to the German scientists who had worked under the assumption that the Allies knew nothing of nuclear fission. This is the story of the wartime race to develop an atomic bomb, and the genius, guilt, complicity and hubris of Nobel Prize-winning scientists working to create a weapon that would undoubtedly have won the war for the Germans.

How and why China has pursued information-age weapons to gain leverage against its adversariesHow can states use military force to achieve their political aims without triggering a catastrophic nuclear war? Among the states facing this dilemma of fighting limited wars, only China has given information-age weapons such a prominent role. While other countries have preferred the traditional options of threatening to use nuclear weapons or fielding capabilities for decisive conventional military victories, China has instead chosen to rely on offensive cyber operations, counterspace capabilities, and precision conventional missiles to coerce its adversaries. In Under the Nuclear Shadow, Fiona Cunningham examines this distinctive aspect of China’s post–Cold War deterrence strategy, developing an original theory of “strategic substitution.” When crises with the United States highlighted the inadequacy of China’s existing military capabilities, Cunningham argues, China pursued information-age weapons that promised to rapidly provide credible leverage against adversaries.Drawing on hundreds of original Chinese-language sources and interviews with security experts in China, Cunningham provides a rare and candid glimpse from Beijing into the information-age technologies that are reshaping how states gain leverage in the twenty-first century. She offers unprecedented insights into the trajectory of China’s military modernization, as she details the strengths and weaknesses of China’s strategic substitution approach. Under the Nuclear Shadow also looks ahead at the uncertain future of China’s strategic substitution approach and briefly explores too how other states might seize upon the promise of emerging technologies to address weaknesses in their own military strategies.

In The Fragile Balance of Terror, the foremost experts on nuclear policy and strategy offer insight into an era rife with more nuclear powers. Some of these new powers suffer domestic instability, others are led by pathological personalist dictators, and many are situated in highly unstable regions of the world—a volatile mix of variables.The increasing fragility of deterrence in the twenty-first century is created by a confluence of forces: military technologies that create vulnerable arsenals, a novel information ecosystem that rapidly transmits both information and misinformation, nuclear rivalries that include three or more nuclear powers, and dictatorial decision making that encourages rash choices. The nuclear threats posed by India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea are thus fraught with danger.The Fragile Balance of Terror, edited by Vipin Narang and Scott D. Sagan, brings together a diverse collection of rigorous and creative scholars who analyze how the nuclear landscape is changing for the worse. Scholars, pundits, and policymakers who think that the spread of nuclear weapons can create stable forms of nuclear deterrence in the future will be forced to think again.Contributors: Giles David Arceneaux, Mark S. Bell, Christopher Clary, Peter D. Feaver, Jeffrey Lewis, Rose McDermott, Nicholas L. Miller, Vipin Narang, Ankit Panda, Scott D. Sagan, Caitlin Talmadge, Heather Williams, Amy Zegart

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST - THE 'MASTERPIECE' DEFINITIVE HISTORY OF THE ATOMIC BOMB'A comprehensive account... focuses not just on the voices of scientists [but] explores overlooked pieces of the Manhattan Project's history.' -Daily Mail'This period in history has never been more relevant and frightening than it is today... A masterpiece.'-James Patterson "Comprehensive and engrossing...Excellent oral history."-Kirkus Reviews***From the international bestselling author of The Only Plane in the Sky, a sweeping oral history of the atomic bomb's creation and deploymentApril 12, 1945. Less than three months into his vice presidency, Harry Truman is catapulted into the Oval Office following the sudden death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. As he recites the oath, he learns a chilling secret known only to a select few: the United States is on the verge of deploying a weapon of unimaginable power. This weapon could end the war but also herald a new age of global fear and uncertainty.Drawing from over twenty-five oral history archives across the US, Japan, and Europe, Graff has masterfully blended the memories and perspectives from key figures like Harry Truman and J. Robert Oppenheimer, the crews of the B-29 bombers, Enola Gay and Bock's Car, the rescuers who bravely faced the destruction, and the haunting stories of those at ground zero in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including the experiences of the hibakusha - the 'bomb-affected people'.Enriched by memoirs, diaries, letters, official documents, and news reports, this is an immersive and deeply human account of the Manhattan Project through the end of World War II and the dawning of the Cold War, offering a vivid, multi-dimensional view of events that reshaped the world forever.

The book reflects the author's experience across more than forty years in assessing and forming policy about nuclear weapons, mostly at senior levels close to the centre both of British governmental decision-making and of NATO's development of plans and deployments, with much interaction also with comparable levels of United States activity in the Pentagon and the State department. Part I of the book seeks to distill, from this exceptional background of practical experience, basic conceptual ways of understanding the revolution brought about by nuclear weapons. It also surveys NATO's progressive development of thinking about nuclear deterrence, and then discusses the deep moral dilemmas posed - for all possible standpoints - by the existence of such weapons. Part II considers the risks and costs of nuclear-weapon possession, including proliferation dangers, and looks at both successful and unsuccessful ideas about how to manage them. Part III illustrates specific issues by reviewing the history and current policies of one long-established possessor, the United Kingdom, and two more recent ones, India and Pakistan. Part IV turns to the future, examines the goal of eventually abolishing all nuclear armouries, and then discusses the practical agenda, short of such a goal, which governments can usefully tackle in reducing the risks of proliferation and other dangers while not surrendering prematurely the war-prevention benefits which nuclear weapons have brought since 1945.This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.

There is no silver bullet for the climate crisis—but that hasn’t stopped people searching. Seizing its chance, the nuclear power industry wants us to believe that theirs is the only technical fix for our deliverance. The public, politicians and the media have been easily swayed.This should come as no surprise. After all, the pro-nuclear PR campaign is richly funded and has an army of lobbyists sowing myths while the industry reaps the rewards of taxpayer-funded subsidies.No To Nuclear calls the industry's bluff. Blasting aside its claims to be safe and green, Linda Pentz Gunter makes the irresistible case that nuclear power is too slow, too expensive, too dangerous and too integrally connected to the nuclear weapons complex, to serve as a rational energy choice.The book also delves into the lives of Indigenous peoples and communities of colour, who have been harmed the most by the nuclear sector, and questions whether the way we devalue nature and the environment is costing us the chance of a genuinely just energy transition.

'War is the most important thing in the world', writes Martin van Creveld, one of the world's best-known experts on military history and strategy.The survival of every country, government, and individual is ultimately dependent on war - or the ability to wage it in self-defence. That is why, though it may come but once in a hundred years, it must be prepared for every day. When it is too late-when the bodies lie stiff and people weep over them-those in charge have failed in their duty. Nevertheless, in spite of the centrality of war to human history and culture, there has for long been no modern attempt to provide a replacement for the classics on war and strategy, Sun Tzu's The Art of War, dating from the 5th or 6th century BC, and Carl von Clausewitz's On War, written in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. What is needed is a modern, comprehensive, easy to read and understand theory of war for the 21st century that could serve as a replacement for these classic texts. The purpose of the present book is to provide just such a theory.

The Oscar-shortlisted documentary Command and Control, directed by Robert Kenner, finds its origins in Eric Schlosser's book and continues to explore the little-known history of the management and safety concerns of America's nuclear aresenal.“A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Fascinating.” —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine“Perilous and gripping . . . Schlosser skillfully weaves together an engrossing account of both the science and the politics of nuclear weapons safety.” —San Francisco ChronicleA myth-shattering exposé of America’s nuclear weaponsFamed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal. A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved—and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind. While the harms of global warming increasingly dominate the news, the equally dangerous yet more immediate threat of nuclear weapons has been largely forgotten.Written with the vibrancy of a first-rate thriller, Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a nuclear missile silo in rural Arkansas with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort by American scientists, policy makers, and military officers to ensure that nuclear weapons can’t be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. At the heart of the book lies the struggle, amid the rolling hills and small farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States.Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with people who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons, Command and Control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view. Through the details of a single accident, Schlosser illustrates how an unlikely event can become unavoidable, how small risks can have terrible consequences, and how the most brilliant minds in the nation can only provide us with an illusion of control. Audacious, gripping, and unforgettable, Command and Control is a tour de force of investigative journalism, an eye-opening look at the dangers of America’s nuclear age.

FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE'Monumental and highly readable... by smartly knitting together the past with the present, Zubok brings a prescient and fresh perspective' Financial TimesA sweeping, original history of the Cold War, from an acclaimed historian of the USSRWhy did the Cold War erupt so soon after the Second World War? How did it escalate so rapidly, spanning five continents over six decades? And what led to the spectacular collapse of the Soviet Union? In this comprehensive guide to the most widespread conflict in contemporary history, Vladislav Zubok traces the origins of the Cold War in post-war Europe, through the tumultuous decades of confrontation, to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond.With remarkable clarity and unique perspective, Zubok argues that the Cold War, often seen as an existential battle between capitalist democracy and totalitarian communism, has long been misunderstood. He challenges the popular Western narrative that economic superiority and democratic values led the USA to victory. Instead, he looks beyond the familiar images of East-West rivalry, shining a light on the impact of non-Western actors and placing the war in the context of global decolonization, Soviet weakness and the accidents of history. Here, he interrogates what happens when stability and peace are no longer the default, when treaties are broken and when diplomacy ceases to function.Drawing on years of research and informed by Zubok’s three decades in the USSR followed by three decades in the West, The World of the Cold War paints a striking portrait of a world on the brink.

The nuclear age came into existence with the explosion of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945. The inauguration of this new era was epitomized by the bomb’s principal creator, J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Since then, the era of the atom has become the age of the bomb—or two bombs: atomic and hydrogen.In The Nuclear Age, Serhii Plokhy, one of our preeminent Cold War historians, explores why governments have acquired and stockpiled nuclear weapons and reveals the global failure to reach meaningful nuclear arms treaties. Plokhy shows how, since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the risk of nuclear war has never been so high: Russia threatens nuclear aggression in its war on Ukraine; China is constructing hundreds of new missile silos; and India and Pakistan are locked in ongoing nuclear competition. Plokhy also examines how more countries than ever have come within perilous reach of acquiring nuclear arms, while new technologies, such as hypersonic missiles and artificial intelligence, make the nuclear landscape increasingly unpredictable.From Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Castle Bravo test of 1954, to the rapidly developing nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, The Nuclear Age reveals the fear that governs the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Plokhy profiles the global players who have diagnosed, stoked, and influenced this fear, from H. G. Wells to Nikita Khrushchev and Vladimir Putin, and he outlines what we might learn from our past to control today’s arms race. As the danger of nuclear war remains imminent, The Nuclear Age diagnoses our era of rearmament.

“This is historical research at its best.” — Dan Carlin"I thought I knew the story but learned much that I didn’t know. Outstanding!"— Richard Rhodes"A well-written opus." — The Wall Street JournalPresident Truman’s choice to drop the atomic bomb is the most debated decision in the 20th Century. But what if Truman’s actual decision wasn’t what everyone thinks it was?The conventional narrative is that American leaders had a choice: Invade Japan, which would have cost millions of Allied and Japanese lives, or instead, use the atom bomb in the hope of convincing Japan to surrender. Truman, the story goes, carefully weighed the pros and cons before deciding that the atomic bomb would be used against Japanese cities, as the lesser of two evils.But nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein argues that is not what happened. Based on a close reading of the historical record, The Most Awful Responsibility shows that, despite his reputation as an ardent defender of the atomic bomb, Truman: Wanted to avoid the “murder” and “slaughter” of innocent civiliansBelieved that the atomic bomb should never be used againHoped that nuclear weapons would be outlawed in his lifetimeNot only did Truman not take part in the decision to use the bomb, but the one major decision that he did make was a very different one — one that he himself did not fully understand until after the atomic bomb was used. The weight of that decision, and that misunderstanding, became the major reason that atomic bombs have not been used again since World War II.Wellerstein makes a startling case that Truman was possibly the most anti-nuclear American president of the twentieth century, but his ambitions were strongly constrained by the domestic and international politics of the postwar world and the early Cold War. This book is a must-read for all who want to truly understand not only why the bomb was dropped on Japan but also why it has not been used since.

Den dramatiserade berättelsen om andra världskrigets vapenrace mellan Nazityskland och de allierade som resulterade i atombomberna över de japanska städerna Hiroshima och Nagasaki 6 och 9 augusti 1945.