The nuclear age
an epic race for arms, power and survival
- ISBN: 9780241582862
- Editorial: Allen Lane Publishers
- Fecha de la edición: 2025
- Lugar de la edición: London. Reino Unido
- Encuadernación: Cartoné
- Medidas: 24 cm
- Nº Pág.: 422
- Idiomas: Inglés
On 16 July 1945, the Nuclear Age began with the explosion of the first atomic bomb and the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer: 'Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.'
While the threat of mutually assured destruction kept a lid on a simmering and tense geopolitical landscape, events like the Chernobyl disaster and near-misses like the Cuban Missile Crisis showed that total destruction was only ever one malfunction, mistake, or miscommunication away. Now, as governments re-arm their nuclear arsenals, treaties designed to limit the acquisition and use of nuclear weapons fall away, and nuclear weapons come increasingly within reach of non-state actors, we are on the brink of a renaissance of the nuclear industry.
In The Nuclear Age, acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy paints an intricate picture of a world governed by fear. From the first artificial splitting of the atom in 1917 and the race to create the first atomic bomb in World War II, through the fraught arms race of the Cold War, to the imperialism, neo-colonial motivation and wars being waged today, the threat posed by nuclear weapons is as pertinent as ever.
As he examines the motivations of key players, Plokhy confronts the crucial question of our age: what can we learn from the first nuclear arms race that can help us to stop the new one?
Prophecy
Fright
Nazis and their friends
Transatlantic alliance
Manhattan Project
Unequal partners
American bomb
Stolen secret
United Nations
Union Jack
Stalin's bomb
British hurricane
Managing fear
Super bomb
Missile gap
Bombe atomique
China syndrome
Cuban gamble
Banning the bomb
Star of David
MAD Men
Smiling Buddha
Star Wars
The fal of the nuclear colossus
Giving up the bomb
The return of fear
Preemptive war
