Nuclear Science

The Peach Blond Bomber introduces Zackary Nixon Johnson, private investigator, his sidekick Harv, artificial intelligence and the world and setting where the Nuclear Bombshell Series takes place.

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.

For years, the United States was confident that the newly democratic Russia and increasingly wealthy China could be lured into a Western-led order that promised prosperity and relative peace—so long as they agreed to Washington’s terms. By the time America emerged from the age of terrorism, it was clear that this had been a fantasy.

From the acclaimed author of The Nobel Prize comes this fascinating portrait of four of the greatest minds in the history of science and the impossible turning point they faced. As World War II wound down, and it became increasingly clear that the Allies would emerge victorious, Albert Einstein invited three close friends - all titans of contemporary science and philosophy - to his home at 112 Mercer Street in Princeton, New Jersey, to discuss what they loved best: science and philosophy.

The world is entering a new nuclear age. Nuclear weapons are returning to the fore of international statecraft in ways unseen since the Cold War. With major powers like Russia issuing threats of nuclear strikes, China and North Korea continuing to grow their arsenals, and new prospects for proliferation from the Middle East to East Asia, the world has been thrust into a new era of heightened nuclear risk. In this incisive book, international security expert Ankit Panda explores the enduring and emerging factors that are contributing to this new nuclear age.

Dakota Sloane, a tough-as-nails former foster kid, has spent her life running from the past. Logan Garcia, a man haunted by secrets, has only one goal: to drink himself into oblivion. They're two strangers in a bar - until the news reports nuclear bombs in New York City and Washington, D.C. Fearing Miami may be next, Dakota's first thought is to grab her little sister - still trapped in the system - and get the hell out of Dodge. Then the world explodes. Logan and Dakota have less than 10 minutes to seek shelter before the lethal cloud of fallout descends.

Dakota and Logan continue their treacherous journey to escape the city, but danger threatens at every turn. They must avoid uncontrollable fires, unstable buildings, and deadly fallout contamination. Dakota knows of a place to ride out the coming chaos - a safe house deep in the Everglades. If Logan helps her rescue her sister, she'll take him with her.

From the moment radiation was discovered in the late nineteenth century, nuclear science has had a rich history of innovative scientific exploration and discovery, coupled with mistakes, accidents, and downright disasters.

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.

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.

On the morning of April 26, 1986, Europe witnessed the worst nuclear disaster in history: the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine. Dozens died of radiation poisoning, fallout contaminated half the continent, and thousands fell ill. In Chernobyl, Serhii Plokhy draws on new sources to tell the dramatic stories of the firefighters, scientists, and soldiers who heroically extinguished the nuclear inferno. He lays bare the flaws of the Soviet nuclear industry....

What draws our species to war? What makes us see violence as a kind of sacred duty, or a ritual that boys must undergo to "become" men? Newly reissued, Blood Rites takes listeners on an original journey from the elaborate human sacrifices of the ancient world to the carnage and holocaust of 20th-century "total war." Ehrenreich sifts deftly through the fragile records of prehistory and discovers the wellspring of war in an unexpected place - not in a "killer instinct" unique to the males of our species, but in the blood rites early humans performed.

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, 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.

A fresh window on American history: the eye-opening truth about the government's secret plans to survive a catastrophic attack on US soil, even if the rest of us die - a road map that spans from the dawn of the nuclear age to today.

In the late 1930s, legendary financier, philanthropist, and society figure Alfred Lee Loomis gathered the most visionary scientific minds of the 20th century at his state-of-the-art laboratory in Tuxedo Park, New York. He established a top-secret defense laboratory at MIT and personally bankrolled pioneering research into new, high-powered radar detection systems that helped defeat the German Air Force and U-boats. With Ernest Lawrence, he pushed Franklin Delano Roosevelt to fund research in nuclear fission, which led to the development of the atomic bomb.

Nearly 30 years after the end of the Cold War, today's world leaders are abandoning disarmament treaties, building up their nuclear arsenals, and exchanging threats of nuclear strikes. To survive this new atomic age, we must relearn the lessons of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War: the Cuban missile crisis. Serhii Plokhy offers an international perspective on the crisis, tracing the tortuous decision-making that produced and then resolved it, which involved John Kennedy and his advisers, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and their commanders on the ground.

All life depends on the sun’s rays. The sunlight promotes life. Plants need light to grow. Animals need plants to survive. The power of the sun was the key to the delicate balance of Earth’s ecosystem. However, as the Earth’s atmosphere was changed by the aftermath of nuclear war, everything its human inhabitants thought they understood about survival was obsolete. They had to evolve with the catastrophic effects of nuclear winter.

In a narrative that moves like a thriller, Rhodes sheds light on the Reagan administration's unprecedented arms buildup in the early 1980s, as well as the arms-reduction campaign that followed, and Reagan's famous 1986 summit meeting with Gorbachev. Rhodes' detailed exploration of events of this time constitutes a prehistory of the neoconservatives. The story is new, compelling, and continually surprising - a revelatory re-creation of a hugely important era of our recent history.

Yonah Bob and Ilan Evyatar describe how Israel has used cyberwarfare, targeted assassinations, and sabotage of Iranian facilities to great effect, sometimes in cooperation with the United States. Even as it takes lethal action, Israel has managed to alter the politics of the Middle East, culminating in the Abraham Accords of 2020. Arab states such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates normalized relations with Israel, and the holy grail of normalization with Saudi Arabia may yet be achieved.

Anna Fifield reconstructs Kim's past and present with exclusive access to sources near him and brings her unique understanding to explain the dynastic mission of the Kim family in North Korea. The archaic notion of despotic family rule matches the almost medieval hardship the country has suffered under the Kims. Few people thought that a young, untested, unhealthy, Swiss-educated basketball fanatic could hold together a country that should have fallen apart years ago. But Kim Jong Un has not just survived, he has thrived.