The hands of humans split the atom and reshaped the world. Gradually revealing a sublime nightmare that begins with spontaneous nuclear fission in the protozoic and ends with the omnicide of the human race, The Manhattan Project traces the military, cultural, and scientific history of the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear power through searing lyric, procedural, and visual poetry. Ken Hunt's poetry considers contemporary life-life in the nuclear age-broadly and deeply. It dances through the liminal zones between routine and disaster, between life and death, between creation and destruction. From the mundane to the extraordinary, Hunt's poems expose the depth to which the nuclear has impacted every aspect of the everyday, and question humanity's ability to avoid our destruction. Challenging the complicity of the scientists who created devastating weapons, exploring the espionage of the nuclear arms race, and exposing the role of human error in nuclear disaster, The Manhattan Project is a necropastoral exploration of the literal and figurative fallout of the nuclear age. These poems wail like a meltdown siren, condemning anthropocentric thinking for its self-destructive arrogance.

Drawing upon anthropology, biology, psychology, sociology, and literature, this brilliant insight into why men go to war traces the changes that have occurred in weapons and tactics since prehistoric times. Robert O'Connell demonstrates how the technology unleashed during World War I made human qualities almost irrelevant to the conduct of war, until now, in the nuclear age, humanity has become subservient to the weapons it has made.

In this thoughtful social history of New Mexico's nuclear industry, Lucie Genay traces the scientific colonization of the state in the twentieth century from the points of view of the local people. Genay focuses on personal experiences in order to give a sense of the upheaval that accompanied the rise of the nuclear era. She gives voice to the Hispanics and Native Americans of the Jemez Plateau, the blue-collar workers of Los Alamos, the miners and residents of the Grants Uranium Belt, and the ranchers and farmers who were affected by the federal appropriation of land in White Sands Missile Range and whose lives were upended by the Trinity test and the US government's reluctance to address the "collateral damage" of the work at the range. Genay reveals the far-reaching implications for the residents as New Mexico acquired a new identity from its embrace of nuclear science.

An important investigation of the sociocultural fallout of America's work on the atomic bomb In The Nuclear Borderlands, Joseph Masco offers an in-depth look at the long-term consequences of the Manhattan Project. Masco examines how diverse groups in and around Los Alamos, New Mexico understood and responded to the U.S. nuclear weapons project in the post-Cold War period. He shows that the American focus on potential nuclear apocalypse during the Cold War obscured the broader effects of the nuclear complex on society, and that the atomic bomb produced a new cognitive orientation toward daily life, reconfiguring concepts of time, nature, race, and citizenship. This updated edition includes a brand-new preface by the author discussing current developments in nuclear politics and the scientific impact of the nuclear age on the present epoch of a human-altered climate.

"In order to curb nuclear-weapons proliferation, it is of fundamental importance to identify the underlying rationale for certain states to seek a nuclear-weapons option, as well as to understand why the vast majority of states, possessing the necessary technology, do not develop nuclear weapons. The international community still has much to learn in this regard and "Nuclear Logics" is a valuable and timely contribution to this discussion."--Dr. Hans Blix, chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission

"Professor Solingen has illuminated an important and often neglected aspect of nuclear motivations, namely the domestic conditions that underlie a country's decision to acquire nuclear weapons. Her well-researched and powerful argument asserts that nuclear-weapons programs are more likely to emerge from states that are hostile to economic openness and, conversely, that they are less likely where states are more willing to integrate with the global political economy."--Mitchell B. Reiss, College of William and Mary

"Solingen not only provides a cogent account of the divergent nuclear trajectories of East Asia and the Middle East, but develops a powerful general explanation resting on whether the state's ruling coalition is inward looking or is geared to integrating with the rest of the world. Both in its challenge to standard views and in its strong positive arguments, this is a study of great value."--Robert Jervis, Columbia University

"Etel Solingen's "Nuclear Logics" provides the depth and insight needed to understand today's urgent dilemmas of nuclear proliferation. She convincingly shows that opening up shuttered states to expanded international economic ties canundermine the political constituencies that favor nuclear weapons programs."--Jack Snyder, Columbia University

""Nuclear Logics" is a first-class piece of work. It deals with a prominent issue, and its central approach--doing a focused, detailed comparison of two regions that started out much the same but have differed in their subsequent histories on proliferation--generates a wealth of interesting and instructive insights."--John Mueller, Ohio State University

"What is most impressive and significant about Solingen's scholarship is its breadth. Her prose is clear and often elegant. I believe her book, which truly is pioneering in both the international-relations and nonproliferation fields, is accessible to both scholars and university students. I am sure it will become required reading in many graduate courses."--William C. Potter, Monterey Institute of International Studies

Unpacking of the dynamics of conflict under conditions of nuclear monopoly, Paul C. Avey argues in Tempting Fate that the costs and benefits of using nuclear weapons create openings that weak nonnuclear actors can exploit. Avey uses four case studies to show the key strategies available to nonnuclear states: Iraqi decision-making under Saddam Hussein in confrontations with the United States; Egyptian leaders' thinking about the Israeli nuclear arsenal during wars in 1969–70 and 1973; Chinese confrontations with the United States in 1950, 1954, and 1958; and a dispute that never escalated to war, the Soviet-United States tensions between 1946 and 1948 that culminated in the Berlin Blockade. Strategies employed include limiting the scope of the conflict, holding chemical and biological weapons in reserve, seeking outside support, and leveraging international non-use norms. Avey demonstrates clearly that nuclear weapons cast a definite but limited shadow, and while the world continues to face various nuclear challenges, understanding conflict in nuclear monopoly will remain a pressing concern for analysts and policymakers. Thanks to generous funding from Virginia Tech and its participation in TOME, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes, available from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.