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 deeply researched international history and exemplary study (New York Times Book Review) of how a divided world ended and our present world was fashioned, as the world drifts toward another great time of choosing. 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. Beginning in the late 1970s and carrying into the present, they focus on the momentous period between 1988 and 1992, when an entire world system changed, states broke apart, and societies were transformed. Such periods have always been accompanied by terrible wars -- but not this time. This is also a story of individuals coping with uncertainty. They voice their hopes and fears. They try out desperate improvisations and careful designs. These were leaders who grew up in a postwar world, who tried to fashion something better, more peaceful, more prosperous, than the damaged, divided world in which they had come of age. New problems are putting their choices, and the world they made, back on the operating table. It is time to recall not only why they made their choices, but also just how great nations can step up to great challenges. Timed for the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, To Build a Better World is an authoritative depiction of contemporary statecraft. It lets readers in on the strategies and negotiations, nerve-racking risks, last-minute decisions, and deep deliberations behind the dramas that changed the face of Europe -- and the world -- forever.

Drawing on previously unpublished Russian archival materials, this book is the first detailed history and current analysis of the North Korean nuclear program. The contributors discuss Soviet-North Korean nuclear relations, economic and military aspects of the nuclear program, the nuclear energy sector, North Korea's negotiations with the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, cooperative security, and U.S. policy. Unique in its focus on North Korean attitudes and perspectives, The North Korean Nuclear Program also includes Russian interviews with North Korean officials.

Continuously in demand since its first, prize-winning edition was published in 1975, this is the classic history of the development of the American atomic bomb, the decision to use it against Japan, and the origins of U.S. atomic diplomacy toward the Soviet Union.
In his Preface to this new edition, the author describes and evaluates the lengthening trail of new evidence that has come to light concerning these often emotionally debated subjects. The author also invokes his experience as a historical advisor to the controversial, aborted 1995 "Enola Gay" exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. This leads him to analyze the impact on American democracy of one of the most insidious of the legacies of Hiroshima: the political control of historical interpretation.
"Reviews of Previous Editions"
"The quality of Sherwin's research and the strength of his argument are far superior to previous accounts."
--"New York Times Book Review"
"Probably the definitive account for a long time to come. . . . Sherwin has tackled some of the critical questions of the Cold War's origins--and has settled them, in my opinion."
--Walter LaFeber,
Cornell University
"One of those rare achievements of conscientious scholarship, a book at once graceful and luminous, yet loyal to its documentation and restrained in its speculations."
--"Boston Globe"

In Understanding and Explaining the Iranian Nuclear 'Crisis': Theoretical Approaches, Halit M.E. Tagma and Paul E. Lenze, Jr. analyze the 'crisis' surrounding Iran's nuclear program through a variety of theoretical approaches, including realism, world-systems theory, liberal institutionalism, domestic politics, and multi-level games. Through these theories, Tagma and Lenze use established academic perspectives to create a more objective understanding and explanation of the debates and issues. Introducing the concept of eclectic pluralism to the study of international relations, Understanding and Explaining the Iranian Nuclear 'Crisis' presents theoretical approaches side by side to explore a complex and evolving international dispute.

On November 10, 2017, Pope Francis became the first pontiff in the nuclear era to take a complete stand against nuclear weapons, even as a form of deterrence. At a Vatican conference of leaders in the field of disarmament, he made it clear that the possession of the bomb itself was immoral. A World Free from Nuclear Weapons presents the pope's address and original testimony from Nobel Peace Prize laureates, religious leaders, diplomats, and civil society activists. These luminaries, which include the pope and a Hiroshima survivor, make the moral case against possessing, manufacturing, and deploying nuclear arms. Drew Christiansen, a member of the Holy See delegation to the 2017 United Nations conference that negotiated the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, helps readers to understand this conference in its historical context. A World Free from Nuclear Weapons is a critical companion for scholars of modern Catholicism, moral theology, and peace studies, as well as policymakers working on effective disarmament. It shows how the Church's revised position presents an opportunity for global leaders to connect disarmament to larger movements for peace, pointing toward future action.

In November 1983, Soviet nuclear forces went on high alert when intelligence reported alarming activity on US bases. In response, the Soviets planned for a nuclear strike by NATO on Eastern Europe. And then Able Archer 83, a vast NATO war game exercise, ended. What the West didn't know was that the Soviets thought Operation Able Archer 83 was real and were preparing for a surprise missile attack from NATO. This close scrape with Armageddon was unknown until 2015, when the US released an analysis. Able Archer 83 vividly recreates the atmosphere that nearly unleashed nuclear war.

On 6 August and 8 August 1945, the world changed forever with the release of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. In January 1947, the United States informed the British Government that they would not provide technical data for the production of nuclear weapons. It was therefore decided that Britain would produce its own bombs. In July 1944, the first operational jet aircraft, the Meteor, entered service in the RAF and the Government decided to develop jet-powered aircraft capable of dropping nuclear weapons, resulting in the development of the 'V' bombers: Valiant, Vulcan and Victor. As a result of the deteriorating relationship with Russia, the United States, as part of NATO, worked with the UK and co-operated in nuclear operational planning with US bomber aircraft based in the UK. Later, as a result of the development of nuclear power, submarines were fitted with nuclear weapons which resulted in the deterrent role passing from the RAF to the Royal Navy. However, the Cold War provided a unique role and responsibility for the RAF.My Target was Leningrad - V Force: Preserving our Democracy is unique in that it is a human story, not just a list of technical facts and bomber data. With many previously unpublished photographs from the author's private collection, this is the chilling story of what really happened and how close the world came to World War III and a nuclear apocalypse. Unlike other military historians, author Philip Goodall not only flew the mighty V bombers in action, but was also tasked to drop the bomb on Leningrad.

This new book covers every nuclear delivery system the United States ever deployed. With few exceptions, each weapon and system is illustrated by either color or black and white photographs. Each weapon also comes with specifications and a history of its development, deployment and retirement (if retired).

India's nuclear program is often misunderstood as an inward-looking endeavor of secretive technocrats. In Ploughshares and Swords, Jayita Sarkar challenges this received wisdom, narrating a global story of India's nuclear program during its first forty years. The book foregrounds the program's civilian and military features by probing its close relationship with the space program. Through nuclear and space technologies, India's leaders served the technopolitical aims of economic modernity and the geopolitical goals of deterring adversaries. The politically savvy, transnationally connected scientists and engineers who steered the program obtained technologies, materials, and information through a variety of state and nonstate actors from Europe and North America, including both superpowers. They thus maneuvered around Cold War politics and the choke points of the nonproliferation regime. Hyperdiversification increased choices for the leaders of the nuclear program but reduced democratic accountability at home. The nuclear program became a consensus-enforcing device in the name of the nation. Ploughshares and Swords is a provocative new history with global implications. It shows how geopolitical and technopolitical visions influence decisions about the nation after decolonization. Thanks to generous funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

These essays (non-technical), written since the end of WWII by the eminent physicist and outspoken advocate of nuclear disarmament, focus on weapons research, arms control, and nuclear power (of which he approves) and include reflections on friends and colleagues as well as a summary of Bethe's own

There is a high risk that someone will use, by accident or design, one or more of the 17,000 nuclear weapons in the world today. Many thought such threats ended with the Cold War or that current policies can prevent or contain nuclear disaster. They are dead wrong-these weapons, possessed by states large and small, stable and unstable, remain an ongoing nightmare. Joseph Cirincione surveys the best thinking and worst fears of experts specializing in nuclear warfare and assesses the efforts to reduce or eliminate these nuclear dangers. His book offers hope: in the 1960s, twenty-three states had nuclear weapons and research programs; today, only nine states have weapons. More countries have abandoned nuclear weapon programs than have developed them, and global arsenals are just one-quarter of what they were during the Cold War. Yet can these trends continue, or are we on the brink of a new arms race-or worse, nuclear war? A former member of Senator Obama's nuclear policy team, Cirincione helped shape the policies unveiled in Prague in 2009, and, as president of an organization intent on reducing nuclear threats, he operates at the center of debates on nuclear terrorism, new nuclear nations, and the risks of existing arsenals.

Whether one is interested in learning about anthrax, sarin, the neutron bomb-or any other weapon of mass destruction-this thorough and detailed reference is the place to find answers. The threat posed by weapons of mass destruction (WMD), whether nuclear, radiological, chemical, or biological, is the number-one topic of concern for the intelligence community, first responders, policymakers, and myriad non-governmental organizations-and many members of the general public. This authoritative reference will serve all of those parties by covering the full spectrum of mass-casualty weapons. The guide will not only enable people to educate themselves, but also to separate the truth from the spurious information that abounds. The book offers an A-to-Z listing of major topics, making finding information about concepts, scientific theories, and realities of WMD fast and easy. While the framework of WMD goes back centuries, the major focus of this reference is on weapons that date from the use of chemical warfare in World War I. The book also covers WMD from the early nuclear era (World War II), the Cold War, and the present (Syria, North Korea, etc.). Each entry is written in a clear, accessible style and includes crucial background information, making this book an essential resource for both lay readers and specialists. Armed with this portable database, readers will have the confidence to deal with, discuss, or write about WMD of all kinds based on an understanding of relevant concepts, policies, and scientific fundamentals. Includes a comprehensive A-to-Z listing and discussion of significant weapons of mass destruction in their historical and present-day contexts Offers straightforward narratives that place these threats into a practical framework Presents the most crucial aspects about each WMD topic, distilling decades of research and analysis Features non-technical discussions of the fundamental concepts as well as the basic science concerning each WMD threat Analyzes the real and perceived threats of WMD from their beginnings in World War I into the future Provides primary source documents, including a full listing of Australia Group export controlled substances, technologies, and biological agents

Since the first atomic weapon was detonated in 1945, Canadians have debated not only the role of nuclear power in their uranium-rich land but also their country’s role in a nuclear world. Should Canada belong to international alliances that depend on the threat of nuclear weapons for their own security? Should Canadian-produced nuclear technologies be exported? What about the impact of atomic research on local communities and the environment? This incisive nuclear history engages with much larger debates about national identity, Canadian foreign policy contradictions during the Cold War, and Canada’s global standing to investigate these critical questions.

This book examines the crucial formative period of Chinese attitudes toward nuclear weapons - the immediate post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki period and the Korean War. It provides a detailed account of U.S. actions and attitudes during this period and China's response, which was especially acute after both countries had entered the Korean conflict as enemies. This response dispels some of the myths that have long existed regarding China's perceptions of nuclear war.

At the dawn of the Atomic Age, Americans encountered troubling new questions brought about by the nuclear revolution: In a representative democracy, who is responsible for national public safety? How do citizens imagine themselves as members of the national collective when faced with the priority of individual survival? What do nuclear weapons mean for transparency and accountability in government? What role should scientific experts occupy within a democratic government? Nuclear weapons created a new arena for debating individual and collective rights. In turn, they threatened to destabilize the very basis of American citizenship. As Sarah E. Robey shows in Atomic Americans, people negotiated the contours of nuclear citizenship through overlapping public discussions about survival. Policymakers and citizens disagreed about the scale of civil defense programs and other public safety measures. As the public learned more about the dangers of nuclear fallout, critics articulated concerns about whether the federal government was operating in its citizens' best interests. By the early 1960s, a significant antinuclear movement had emerged, which ultimately contributed to the 1963 nuclear testing ban. Atomic Americans tells the story of a thoughtful body politic engaged in rewriting the rubric of rights and responsibilities that made up American citizenship in the Atomic Age.

The story of U. S. nuclear testing between 1945 and 1963 is a vivid and exciting one, but also one of profound importance. It is a story of trailblazing scientific progress, weapons of mass destruction, superpower rivalry, accidents, radiological contamination, politics, and diplomacy. The testing of weapons that defined the course and consequences of the Cold War was itself a crucial dimension to the narrative of that conflict. Further, the central question of why conduct nuclear tests was debated among politicians, generals, civilians, and scientists. The book focuses on this question and on the United States as it was the first nation to test and use nuclear weapons. The U.S. also has remained ahead of all other powers in achieving significant testing milestones and has conducted more nuclear tests than any other nuclear power. It first argues that nuclear weapons testing was for the most part a rational state act that provided essential information about nuclear weapons and their use. This information, in turn, illuminated other important issues, such as the details of test cessation agreements.Second, crucial to the history of nuclear testing as a rational state act was the idea of its normalization, a process that began under Truman. The norm of nuclear testing as an acceptable state action however was undermined by Eisenhower's moratorium of 1958-1961. The ensuing political dilemma surrounding the tests led under Kennedy found a resolution only through the Limited Test Ban Treaty. Lastly, the book argues that part of the reason why Washington accepted the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963 was because it recognized that it had accomplished all that could realistically be expected from atmospheric weapons testing. Overall, it was a victory for those who argued in favor of national security over diplomatic and environmental costs that normalized nuclear weapons tests. Today, as states continue to pursue nuclear weaponry, nuclear testing remains an important political issue in the 21st century, making the study of its history vital.

Recipient of the 1991 Scholarly Achievement Award of the North Central Sociological Association Minutes To Midnight is a timely examination of one of the preeminent moral, political, and economic dilemmas of our time. McCrea and Markle explore the dynamics of social movements behind antinuclear weapons campaigns in America--from the earliest post-war atomic scientists' movement to the "ban the bomb" efforts to the ill-fated Freeze movement of the 1980s. The authors note that the atomic scientists' movement was the first attempt by scientists--as scientists--to protest the uses of their own creation. They locate contemporary problems in their historical context by exploring the ways in which traditional pacifist groups provided the infrastructure and directly presaged--in strategy, tactics, and organizational dilemmas--the Freeze movement. The authors use their information on antinuclear protest activity as a way of understanding how social movements are founded, how they fare, and how social change occurs in postindustrial society. This highly readable book will be of interest to a broad interdisciplinary audience of scholars, professionals, graduate students, and upper-division undergraduates in political science, peace studies, American studies, sociology and the study of social movements, international relations, and history. "An excellent supplementary reading in college courses on social movements and political sociology. . . will stimulate discussion and debate on perhaps the most important issue of the century." --Contemporary Sociology "The book clearly applies social theory to richly described cases of American protests against nuclear weapons; admirably, the cases are viewed as linked within a broad historical context." --Louis Kriesberg, Syracuse University "For those interested in group theory. . . it does compile some useful information on the strategies and tactics of the various associations discussed. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and general readers." --Choice

Atomic energy is not only invisible, it has been cloaked in secrecy by government, industry, and the military. Yet for many Americans the effects of radiation have been less than secret. Just ask the radium workers in Ottawa, Illinois, the "downwinders" of Utah, or unsuspecting veterans of the Gulf War. When told from the perspective of ordinary people, nuclear history takes on a much different tone from that of the tranquil voices of authority who always told us we had nothing to fear. In "Learning to Glow," twenty-four essays testify to many of the unsuspected human and environmental costs of atomic science. They show that Americans have paid a terrible price for supposedly "winning" the Cold War--for although the nuclear nightmare may be over, we are still living with nuclear threats every day. Writers such as Scott Russell Sanders, Terry Tempest Williams, and Barbara Kingsolver reveal the psychic and emotional fallout of the Cold War and of subsequent developments in nuclear science. The essays include personal testimonies of what it was like to grow up with family members in nuclear-related jobs; hard-hitting journalism on the health and environmental costs of our nuclear policies and practices; and poignant stories of coming to terms with nuclear power, including contributions by writers who revisit Hiroshima in an attempt to heal the wounds left by the Bomb. These essays offer an alternative to the official version of nuclear history as told to us by school textbooks, government authorities, and nuclear industry officials. They are stories of and by ordinary people who have suffered the consequences of the decisions made by those in power-stories that have been largely ignored, dismissed, or suppressed. They will challenge readers to re-examine their preconceptions about the way we deal with issues of nuclear arms and radioactive waste because they show that nuclear history does not belong to experts but to us all.

Contributors:
Marilou Awiakta
John Bradley
Jim Carrier
Alison Hawthorne Deming
Mary Dickson
Edward Dougherty
Ray Gonzalez
Karl Grossman
Sonya Huber
Barbara Kingsolver
Valerie Kuletz
Mary Laufer
Kay Mack
Craig McGrath
Bill Mesler
Richard H. Minear
Randy Morris
Mayumi Oda
Catherine Quigg
Richard Rawles
Kenneth Robbins
Scott Russell Sanders
David Seaborg
Terry Tempest Williams
Bill Witherup
Phil Woods

This collection of essays offers a fresh look at the 1970s, the crucial decade when the nuclear non-proliferation regime took shape. Exploring a broad array of newly declassified archival sources from different countries across the globe, and moving freely across methodological and national barriers, historians from Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa discuss the making of the global nuclear order from truly international and transnational perspectives. The result is a fascinating and innovative volume which will remain an essential reference for historians of the nuclear age, of the cold war, and more generally of the evolution of the international system in the second half of the twentieth century. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The International History Review.

General Leslie Groves and J. Robert Oppenheimer were the two men chiefly responsible for the building of the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos, code name "The Manhattan Project." As the ranking military officer in charge of marshalling men and material for what was to be the most ambitious, expensive engineering feat in history, it was General Groves who hired Oppenheimer (with knowledge of his left-wing past), planned facilities that would extract the necessary enriched uranium, and saw to it that nothing interfered with the accelerated research and swift assembly of the weapon.This is his story of the political, logistical, and personal problems of this enormous undertaking which involved foreign governments, sensitive issues of press censorship, the construction of huge plants at Hanford and Oak Ridge, and a race to build the bomb before the Nazis got wind of it. The role of groves in the Manhattan Project has always been controversial. In his new introduction the noted physicist Edward Teller, who was there at Los Alamos, candidly assesses the general's contributions,and Oppenheimer's,while reflecting on the awesome legacy of their work.

This book focuses on the disagreements which existed in British political and military circles over nuclear strategy during the period from 1945 to 1964. Based on recently released documents, the book argues that British policy in this important area was much more ambiguous and much less coherent than is usually supposed.

This updated edition of this essential collection of historic writings by the pre-eminent scientists and historians who bore witness to the birth of the modern nuclear age now includes President Barack Obama's 2016 statement at Hiroshima, all-new writings from Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb, and a new foreword by Cynthia C. Kelly.Born out of a small research program that began in 1939, the Manhattan Project would eventually employ more than 130,000 people and cost a total of nearly $2 billion--all operating entirely under a shroud of secrecy. This groundbreaking collection of essays, articles, documents, and excerpts from history, biographies, plays, novels, letters, and oral histories, newly updated on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is the first ever to source such primary history about the creation of the atomic bomb. Included is President Barak Obama's 2016 statement at Hiroshima, as well as new perspectives from hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) and the mayors of Hisorshima and Nagasaki. Also included are writings by and about J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Leslie Groves, Klaus Fuchs, Henry Stimson, Harry S Truman, Vannevar Bush, Niels Bohr, and many other key figures and authors including Joseph Kanon, Jennet Conant, Kai Bird, and Martin Sherwin. The Manhattan Project is the most comprehensive exploration of the making of the atomic bomb available today.

The most significant challenge to the post-Cold War international order is the growing power of ambitious states opposed to the West. Iran, Russia and China each view the global structure through the prism of historical experience. Rejecting the universality of Western liberal values, these states and their governments each consider the relative decline of Western economic hegemony as an opportunity. Yet cooperation between them remains fragmentary. The end of Western sanctions and the Iranian nuclear deal; the Syrian conflict; new institutions in Central and East Asia: in all these areas and beyond, the potential for unity or divergence is striking. In this comprehensive study, Ariane Tabatabai and Dina Esfandiary address the substance of this `triple axis' in the realms of energy, trade, and military security. In particular they scrutinise Iran-Russia and the often overlooked field of Iran-China relations. Their argument - that interactions between the three will shape the world stage for decades to come - will be of interest to anyone looking to understand the contemporary international security puzzle.

Political Fallout is the story of one of the first human-driven, truly global environmental crises-radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War-and the international response. Beginning in 1945, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union detonated hundreds of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, scattering a massive amount of radioactivity across the globe. The scale of contamination was so vast, and radioactive decay so slow, that the cumulative effect on humans and the environment is still difficult to fully comprehend. The international debate over nuclear fallout turned global radioactive contamination into an environmental issue, eventually leading the nuclear superpowers to sign the landmark Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) in 1963. Bringing together environmental history and Cold War history, Toshihiro Higuchi argues that the PTBT, originally proposed as an arms control measure, transformed into a dual-purpose initiative to check the nuclear arms race and radioactive pollution simultaneously. Higuchi draws on sources in English, Russian, and Japanese, considering both the epistemic differences that emerged in different scientific communities in the 1950s and the way that public consciousness around the risks of radioactive fallout influenced policy in turn. Political Fallout addresses the implications of science and policymaking in the Anthropocene-an era in which humans are confronting environmental changes of their own making.