The Nuclear Age: An Epic Race for Arms, Power, and Survival
Stock Information
Description
A sweeping history of the geopolitics behind the nuclear arms race, from the first atomic bomb to today’s rush to stockpile nuclear weapons.
The nuclear age came into existence with the explosion of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945. The inauguration of this new era was epitomized by the bomb’s principal creator, J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Since then, the era of the atom has become the age of the bomb—or two bombs: atomic and hydrogen.
In The Nuclear Age, Serhii Plokhy, one of our preeminent Cold War historians, explores why governments have acquired and stockpiled nuclear weapons and reveals the global failure to reach meaningful nuclear arms treaties. Plokhy shows how, since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the risk of nuclear war has never been so high: Russia threatens nuclear aggression in its war on Ukraine; China is constructing hundreds of new missile silos; and India and Pakistan are locked in ongoing nuclear competition. Plokhy also examines how more countries than ever have come within perilous reach of acquiring nuclear arms, while new technologies, such as hypersonic missiles and artificial intelligence, make the nuclear landscape increasingly unpredictable.
From Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Castle Bravo test of 1954, to the rapidly developing nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, The Nuclear Age reveals the fear that governs the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Plokhy profiles the global players who have diagnosed, stoked, and influenced this fear, from H. G. Wells to Nikita Khrushchev and Vladimir Putin, and he outlines what we might learn from our past to control today’s arms race. As the danger of nuclear war remains imminent, The Nuclear Age diagnoses our era of rearmament.
Praise for The Nuclear Age: An Epic Race for Arms, Power, and Survival
Perfectly timed, essential, and compelling… [The Nuclear Age] is panoramic in scope and fastidious in detail.
— David Patrikarakos - Financial Times
The Nuclear Age ably presents the variability of political, military and ethical considerations that have been central to decision makers since the dawn of the atomic era…A useful history.
— John Bolton - Wall Street Journal
A brisk and compelling history. . . . [The Nuclear Age] demonstrates Plokhy's mastery.
— Michael J. Ard - The Cipher Brief
Few historians write with Serhii Plokhy’s authority, clarity, or global vision. The Nuclear Age is not only the definitive account of how nuclear power and peril have shaped the modern world, but a profound warning about the risks we still face. This is essential reading, and a marvelous book.
— Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads
A well-documented history of the effort to control nuclear weapons.
— Kirkus Reviews
