Nuclear History

Based on years of forensic archaeology combined with interviews of more than two hundred survivors and their families, Ghosts of Hiroshima is a you-are-there account of ordinary human beings thrust into extraordinary events, during which our modern civilization entered its most challenging phase—a nuclear adolescence that, unless we are very wise and learn from our past, we may not survive.

Atoms and Ashes recounts the dramatic history of nuclear accidents that have dogged the industry in its military and civil incarnations since the 1950s. Through the stories of six terrifying major incidents—Bikini Atoll, Kyshtym, Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima—Cold War expert Serhii Plokhy explores the risks of nuclear power, both for military and peaceful purposes, while offering a vivid account of how individuals and governments make decisions under extraordinary circumstances.

In 1969 the US Air Force issued a statement that read‚ "No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security." This statement has been proven untrue by the testimony of many military officers and airmen and documentation of incidents involving UFOs and nuclear weapons, testimonies of which the US Air Force was fully aware. UAPs and the Nuclear Puzzle details many of these testimonies, some for the first time.

A myth-shattering exposé of America’s nuclear weapons. Famed 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...

Drawing on troves of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time through the author's efforts, Restricted Data traces the complex evolution of the US nuclear secrecy regime from the first whisper of the atomic bomb through the mounting tensions of the Cold War and into the early 21st century. A compelling history of powerful ideas at war, it tells a story that feels distinctly American: rich, sprawling, and built on the conflict between high-minded idealism and ugly, fearful power.

The Doomsday Machine is Ellsberg's hair-raising insider's account of the most dangerous arms buildup in the history of civilization, whose legacy - and renewal under the Obama administration - threatens the very survival of humanity. It is scarcely possible to estimate the true dangers of our present nuclear policies without penetrating the secret realities of the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years, when Ellsberg had high-level access to them.

To Hell and Back offers listeners a stunning "you are there" time capsule, wrapped in elegant prose. Charles Pellegrino's scientific authority and close relationship with the A-bomb survivors make his account the most gripping and authoritative ever written.

From two former military officers and award-winning authors, a chillingly authentic geopolitical thriller that imagines a naval clash between the US and China in the South China Sea in 2034--and the path from there to a nightmarish global conflagration. On March 12, 2034, US Navy Commodore Sarah...

From New York Times bestselling historian Dan Jones, a grand and sweeping exploration of the world’s most awe-inspiring buildings, told through the lives of the people that fought, prayed, survived, and died within them Castles have been built to defend humanity for millennia—from the walls...

In November 1983, the Cold War reached one of its most dangerous and least remembered turning points. Able Archer 83 was not a battle, not an invasion, and not a declared crisis. It was a NATO command-post exercise, a controlled rehearsal designed to test communications, procedures, and decision-making in the event of war. Yet behind the closed doors of bunkers and command centres, it unfolded in a climate so tense, so brittle, and so saturated with fear that the Soviet Union reportedly interpreted elements of the exercise as preparation for a real nuclear first strike.

One woman is called upon to rebuild the future of humankind after a nuclear war, in this revelatory post-apocalyptic tale from the award-winning author of Parable of the Sower. When Lilith lyapo wakes from a centuries-long sleep, she finds herself aboard the vast spaceship of the Oankali. She...

Having barely escaped the Overcavern Forest with his life, Ben is ready for some peace and safety in the city of Solas. Unfortunately, he won't find it, not in that nightmare of a city. Especially not with the pristine body of Betsy the Purebeast safely sealed away in his Utility Pocket; a treasure so rare that it's garnered interest from all the wrong kinds of powerful people. With Vivi once again accused of the very same crimes he'd was exiled for, the power of Solas are determined to use this farce of a trial (by human standards) to rip Betsy from the teams still cooling fingers.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has punctured the longest stretch of peace between major powers since WWII, bringing the horrors of warfare—past, present, and future—to the forefront of listeners' minds. In The Shortest History of War, internationally acclaimed historian Gwynne Dyer adds urgently needed context. Dyer ably charts the evolution of violent conflict: tribal aggression, classical combat, limited war, total war, and cold war-followed by present-day terrorism, nuclear threats, and the development of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS).

The world is never finished catching up with Vaclav Smil. In his latest and perhaps most digestible book, Invention and Innovation, the prolific author—a favorite of Bill Gates—pens an insightful and fact-filled jaunt through the history of human invention. Impatient with the hype that so often accompanies innovation, Smil offers in this book a clear-eyed corrective to the overpromises that accompany everything from new cures for diseases to AI.

On September 6, 2007, shortly after midnight, Israeli fighters advanced on Deir ez-Zour in Syria. Israel often flew into Syria as a warning to President Bashar al-Assad. But this time, there was no warning and no explanation. This was a covert operation, with one goal: to destroy a nuclear reactor being built by North Korea under a tight veil of secrecy in the Syrian desert. Shadow Strike tells, for the first time, the story of the espionage, military might and psychological warfare behind Israel’s operation to stop one of the greatest known acts of nuclear proliferation.

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.

First published in 1981, Lawrence Freedman's The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy was immediately acclaimed as the standard work on the history of attempts to cope militarily and politically with the terrible destructive power of nuclear weapons. It has now been completely rewritten, drawing on a wide range of new research, and updated to take account of the period following the end of the cold war, covering all nuclear powers.

Solo hay un escenario, aparte del impacto de un asteroide, capaz de acabar con el mundo tal como lo conocemos en cuestión de horas: una guerra nuclear. Hasta ahora, nadie fuera de los círculos oficiales ha sabido con exactitud qué sucedería si un estado rebelde lanzara una cabeza nuclear contra el Pentágono. Segundo a segundo y minuto a minuto, estos son los acontecimientos, acciones y protocolos reales que coreografían el fin de la civilización.

It's 1942 and the Nazis are racing to be the first to build a weapon unlike any known before. They have the physicists, they have the uranium, and now all their plans depend on amassing a single ingredient: heavy water, which is produced in Norway's Vemork, the lone plant in all the world that makes this rare substance. Under threat of death, Vemork's engineers push production into overdrive. For the Allies, the plant must be destroyed.

Uranium is best known for the destructive power of the atom bombs, which ushered in the nuclear era at the end of World War II, but given the effectiveness of nuclear power, nuclear power plants were constructed around the developed world during the second half of the 20th century. While nuclear power plants were previously not an option and thus opened the door to new, more efficient, and more affordable forms of energy for domestic consumption, the use of nuclear energy understandably unnerved people living during the Cold War and amidst ongoing nuclear detonations.