Nuclear 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.

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

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

Here, for the first time, in a brilliant, panoramic portrait by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is the definitive, often shocking story of the politics and the science behind the development of the hydrogen bomb and the birth of the Cold War.

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

Bestselling author Max Hastings offers a welcome re-evaluation of one of the most gripping and tense international events in modern history—the Cuban Missile Crisis—providing a people-focused narrative that explores the attitudes and conduct....

In a narrative that moves like a thriller, Rhodes sheds light on the Reagan administration's unprecedented arms buildup in the early 1980s....

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

From Neil Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic A Bright Shining Lie, comes this long-awaited, magnificent epic. Here is the never-before-told story of the nuclear arms race that changed history - and of the visionary American Air Force officer Bernard Schriever....

One of the great secrets of the Cold War, hidden for decades, is revealed at last....

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....

Stalking the Red Bear, for the first time ever, describes the action principally from the perspective of a commanding officer of a nuclear submarine during the Cold War....

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. Edward Teller assesses General Groves' contributions—and Oppenheimer's—while reflecting on the awesome legacy of their work.

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....

The riveting story of how President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur squared off to decide America's future in the aftermath of World War II....

Robert Oppenheimer was among the most brilliant and divisive of men....

From Chris Wallace, the veteran journalist and anchor of Fox News Sunday comes a behind-the-scenes account of the 116 days leading up to the American attack on Hiroshima....

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

What’s it like to spend three months without sunlight, sharing what little space you have with over 100 fellow crewmen and more firepower than all the bombs dropped in World War II? This memoir reveals the funny, challenging, one-of-a-kind experience that is life on a nuclear submarine....

The Doomsday Machine is Ellsberg's hair-raising insider's account of the most dangerous arms buildup in the history of civilization....

Who were the three men the American and Soviet superpowers exchanged at Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge and Checkpoint Charlie in the first prisoner exchange of the nuclear age? Bridge of Spies vividly traces their paths to that electrifying moment on February 10, 1962....

The culminating volume in Richard Rhodes’s monumental and prizewinning history of nuclear weapons, offering the first comprehensive narrative of the challenges faced in a post-Cold War age. The past 20 years have transformed our relationship with nuclear weapons drastically....

Former Seattle Times science writer Hill Williams traces the amazing, tragic story - from the dawn of nuclear science to Cold War testing in the Marshall Islands....

From the author the classic The Wizards of Armageddon and Pulitzer Prize finalist comes the definitive history of American policy on nuclear war - and Presidents’ actions in nuclear crises - from Truman to Trump....

Nuclear weapons are, today, as important as they were during the Cold War, and some experts say we could be as close to a nuclear catastrophe now as we were at the height of that conflict. Despite that, conversations about these bombs generally often happen in past tense.