Weapons & Warfare

There is only one scenario other than an asteroid strike that could end the world as we know it in a matter of hours: nuclear war. And one of the triggers for that war would be a nuclear missile inbound toward the United States.

Discover the definitive history of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, in this Pulitzer Prize finalist from the author of the New York Times best seller Area 51....

A revelatory history of how postcolonial African Independence movements were systematically undermined by one nation above all: the US....

Authors Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff take a riveting inside look at an elite unit within the Pentagon—the Defense Innovation Unit, also known as Unit X—whose mission is to bring Silicon Valley’s cutting-edge technology to America’s military.

Here for the first time, in rich human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed....

Flamethrowers, poison gases, incendiary bombs, the large-scale spreading of disease...are these terrifying agents and implements of warfare modern inventions? Not by a long shot....

The virus now known as Stuxnet was unlike any other piece of malware built before: Rather than simply hijacking targeted computers or stealing information from them, it proved that a piece of code could escape the digital realm and wreak actual, physical destruction....

The first major bioterror event in the United States - the anthrax attacks in October 2001 - was a clarion call for scientists who work with "hot" agents to find ways of protecting civilian populations against biological weapons....

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....

Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America's nuclear arsenal....

Few people are aware that John Moses Browning - a tall, humble, cerebral man born in 1855 and raised as a Mormon in the American West - was the mind behind many of the world-changing firearms that dominated more than a century of conflict....

From a preeminent historian of Eastern Europe, the definitive history of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster....

Tested and effective leadership and teaching advice based on riveting combat stories from a Special Operations veteran....

This book by military strategist Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., is the definitive take on the race for military dominance in the twenty-first century....

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, Cold War expert Serhii Plokhy explores the risks of nuclear power....

In October 1962, when the United States confronted the Soviet Union over its installation of missiles in Cuba, few people shared the behind-the-scenes story as it is told here by the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy....

Brett Baier's Three Days in January illuminates how Eisenhower, an underappreciated giant of US history, still offers vital lessons for our own time....

This Very Short Introduction looks at the science of nuclear weapons and how they differ from conventional weapons....

The first volume in a two-book series about each of the atomic bomb drops that ended the Pacific War based on years of irreplicable personal interviews with survivors to tell a story of devastation and resilience....

In the early hours of February 25, 1968, a Russian submarine armed with three nuclear ballistic missiles set sail from its base in Siberia on a routine combat patrol to Hawaii. Then it vanished....

From New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean comes the gripping, untold story of a renegade group of scientists and spies determined to keep Adolf Hitler from obtaining the ultimate prize: a nuclear bomb....

This essential, pause-resister narrative on the history of drone warfare by the acclaimed author of Rumsfeld explores how this practice emerged....

In this groundbreaking look at the Cuban Missile Crisis, Martin Sherwin not only gives us a riveting sometimes hour-by-hour explanation of the crisis itself, but also explores the origins, scope, and consequences of the evolving place of nuclear weapons in the post-World War II world....

The ramifications of the Manhattan Project are with us to this day. The atomic bombs that came out of it brought an end to the war in the Pacific, but at a heavy loss of life in Japan and the opening of a Pandora's box that has tested international relations....

The never-before-told inside story of how Israel stopped Syria from becoming a global nuclear nightmare - and its far-reaching implications....