Nuclear Science

Why did the US intelligence services fail so spectacularly to know about the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities following World War II? As Vince Houghton, historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, shows us, that disastrous failure came just a few years after the Manhattan Project's intelligence team had penetrated the Third Reich and knew every detail of the Nazi's plan for an atomic bomb. What changed and what went wrong?

Gavin reassesses the strategy of flexible response, the influence of nuclear weapons during the Berlin Crisis, the origins of and motivations for US nuclear nonproliferation policy, and how to assess the nuclear dangers we face today. Archival evidence makes it clear that decision makers were more concerned about underlying geopolitical questions than about the strategic dynamic between two nuclear superpowers.

Across the Western alliance, liberal politicians and pundits are calling for renewed diplomatic engagement with Iran, convinced that Tehran will respond to reason and halt its nuclear weapons program. Yet, according to best-selling author and former U.N. ambassador Dore Gold, countries have repeatedly tried diplomatic talks and utterly failed.

As Andrew Brown shows in Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience, Joseph Rotblat's life--from an impoverished childhood in war-torn Warsaw to an active old age that brought honors and public recognition, including the Nobel Peace Prize--is a compelling human story in itself. What gives it added significance is Rotblat's single-minded dedication to peaceful causes, particularly his pursuit of nuclear disarmament.

After the end of modern civilization, the world hangs in a dreadful balance. Humanity, giant beasts, and aliens live together, all fighting to survive a wasteland littered with scars of the apocalypse. The Nuclear Knights - humanity’s last defenders - disappeared five years ago to parts unknown. Now, the last remaining piece of human society on a space station plots to reclaim the Earth for themselves. Seeking help from the reclusive heroes to survive the coming war, the last survivors of mankind soon face a deadly last stand that will forever change the future of their world.

Robert Oppenheimer had a lot resting on his shoulders. During the Second World War, he was tasked with directing the development of the world’s first nuclear arsenal. Known as the Manhattan Project, this super-secretive wartime project had the stoic visage of Oppenheimer overseeing the greatest experiment ever conducted by humankind. Much had happened in Oppenheimer’s life to lead him to this point, and much would subsequently take place after, but this moment was indeed the pinnacle of his career and his life.

Leading analysts have predicted for decades that nuclear weapons would help pacify international politics. But why do international relations in the nuclear age remain so competitive? Indeed, why are today's major geopolitical rivalries intensifying? In The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution, Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press tackle the central puzzle of the nuclear age: The persistence of intense geopolitical competition in the shadow of nuclear weapons.

Trashing the Planet is the one book you need to get a common-sense grasp on the contentious issues of environmentalism, where science and politics overlap and well-meaning idealism turns to counterproductive eco-terrorism. Dixy Lee Ray, a marine biologist and former chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, calls for environmentalists to regain a sense of perspective and not let their ardor carry them into the realm of “noble lies.”

Das erste deutschsprachige Buch über die Atombombenlüge! Dieses Buch handelt von einer der größten PSYOPs der Menschheitsgeschichte. Selbst die alternativen Medien wagen es nicht, dieses Narrativ in Frage zu stellen. Denn kaum eine Lüge wird von den Kontrolleuren dieser Welt so gut geschützt wie die der Atombombe. Doch warum ist das so? Welchen Zweck erfüllt diese gigantische Lüge? Dieses Buch ist das Ergebnis jahrelanger Recherchen, die beweisen, dass es Atombomben nie gegeben hat!

Nuclear Russia probes the juncture of history of science and technology, political and cultural history, and environmental history. It considers the atom in Russian society as a reflection of Leninist technological utopianism, Cold War imperatives, scientific hubris, public acceptance, and a state desire to conquer nature. Furthermore the audiobook examines the vital – and perhaps unexpected – significance of ethnicity and gender in nuclear history by looking at how Kazakhs and Nenets lost their homelands and their health in Russia in the wake of nuclear testing.

Nuclear terrorism is such a disturbing prospect that we shy away from its details. Yet, as a consequence, we fail to understand how best to defeat it. Michael Levi takes us inside nuclear terrorism and behind the decisions a terrorist leader would be faced with in pursuing a nuclear plot. Along the way, Levi identifies the many obstacles, large and small, that such a terrorist scheme might encounter, allowing him to discover a host of ways that any plan might be foiled.

Centered on the inter-war years—within the ivy clad walls of Cambridge University's famed Cavendish Laboratory, amid the windswept valleys of north Wales, and in the industrial heartland of Birmingham—The Basis of Everything is the story of the coming of the atomic bomb, and how the unlikely union of two scientists—Ernest Rutherford, the son of a New Zealand farmer, and Mark Oliphant, a peace-loving vegetarian from a tiny Australian hills village—would change the world.

Once home to the United States's largest plutonium production site, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State is laced with 56 million gallons of radioactive waste. The threat of an explosive accident at Hanford is all too real—an event that could be more catastrophic than Chernobyl. The EPA designated Hanford the most toxic place in America; it is also the most expensive environmental clean-up job the world has ever seen, with a $677 billion price tag that keeps growing.

Illuminating the very human conversation around nuclear for the first time, from the roots of the American environmental movement to the present, Atomic Dreams offers a look at why we fear certain things, how people’s minds can change, and what a grand-scale political reversal looks like up close, even when it feels, so often, like change is impossible.

America's Nuclear Wastelands presents an expert, yet straightforward overview of this complex topic, including nuclear weapons history and contamination issues. The author, a government consultant with a long career in Pacific Northwest nuclear waste issues, also explores the current institutional and political environment, demonstrating the critical role of public participation for past and future generations.

Twice a week, the president pilots his ultraluxury airship Trump Sky Alpha (seats start at $50,000), delivering, as he travels between D.C., New York City, and Mar-a-Lago, a streaming YouTube address to the nation, in which he trumpets his successes and blasts his enemies - until the day his words plunge the world into nuclear war. One year later, with 90 percent of the world's population destroyed, a journalist named Rachel has taken refuge in the Twin Cities Metro Containment Zone.

Mildred Groves, an unusual young woman gifted and cursed with the ability to see the future, goes to work in a top-secret research facility during WWII, only to be tormented by visions of what the mission will mean for humankind.

Reed Futrell is an engineer at a uranium-enrichment plant in heartland America. His father worked at the very same plant before him. Despite his father's death in a tragic accident at the atomic plant years ago, Reed stays on, proud to perform demanding and dangerous work for the benefit of the nation. As for the radioactive "incidents" he has endured, Reed prefers to think about other things, such as Hubble photographs of distant galaxies and Albert Einstein, his dog.

In the summer of 2012, in the dead of night, three peace activists penetrated the exterior of Y-12 in Tennessee, supposedly one of the most secure nuclear-weapons facilities in the United States. A drifter, an 82-year-old nun, and a house painter. And if they had been terrorists armed with explosives, intent on mass destruction? That nightmare scenario underlies the government’s response to the intrusion.

Two of America's leading scholar-diplomats, Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, have combed sources in several languages, interviewed leading figures, and drawn on their own firsthand experience to bring to life the choices that molded the contemporary world. Zeroing in on the key moments of decision, the might-have-beens, and the human beings working through them, they explore both what happened and what could have happened, to show how one world ended and another took form.