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A Nuclear Family Vacation
- Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
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Publisher's summary
In A Nuclear Family Vacation, husband-and-wife journalists Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger hit the road to explore the secretive world of nuclear weaponry. Weaving together first-class travel writing and crack investigative journalism, the pair pursues both adventures and answers: Why are nuclear weapons still on hair-trigger alert? Is there really such a thing as a suitcase nuke? And which nuclear power plants are most likely to be covers for weapons programs? Their itinerary takes them from the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan to the U.S.'s own top-secret "Site R", opening a unique perspective on the world's vast nuclear infrastructure and the international politics at play behind it.
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Story
Here for the first time, in rich human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan. Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly - or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity, there was a span of hardly more than 25 years.
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Beware limitations of the reader
- By JFanson on 01-01-19
By: Richard Rhodes
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Area 51
- An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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It is the most famous military installation in the world. And it doesn't exist. Located a mere s75 miles outside of Las Vegas in Nevada's desert, the base has never been acknowledged by the US government - but Area 51 has captivated imaginations for decades. Annie Jacobsen had exclusive access to 19 men who served the base proudly and secretly for decades and are now aged 75-92, and unprecedented access to 55 additional military and intelligence personnel, scientists, pilots, and engineers linked to the secret base, 32 of whom lived and worked there for extended periods.
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Disappointing
- By Mike From Mesa on 06-06-11
By: Annie Jacobsen
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Curveball
- Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War
- By: Bob Drogin
- Narrated by: Erik Singer
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Abridged
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Curveball answers the crucial question of the Iraq war: How and why was America’s intelligence so catastrophically wrong? In this dramatic and explosive book, award-winning Los Angeles Times reporter Bob Drogin delivers a narrative that takes us to Europe, the Middle East, and deep inside the CIA to find the truth—the truth about the lies and self-deception that led us into a military and political nightmare.
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George W. Bush lied...
- By Jonathan Love on 11-21-14
By: Bob Drogin
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1983
- Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink
- By: Taylor Downing
- Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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A riveting, real-life thriller about 1983 - the year tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union nearly brought the world to the point of nuclear Armageddon. The year 1983 was an extremely dangerous one - more dangerous than 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the United States, President Reagan vastly increased defense spending, described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," and launched the "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative to shield the country from incoming missiles.
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Great story, poor narration choices.
- By John Gray on 02-11-19
By: Taylor Downing
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A Brotherhood of Spies
- The U-2 and the CIA's Secret War
- By: Monte Reel
- Narrated by: Paul Michael
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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On May 1, 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union just weeks before a peace summit between the two nations. The CIA concocted a cover story for President Eisenhower to deliver, assuring him that no one could have survived a fall from that altitude. But against all odds, pilot Francis Gary Powers emerged from the wreckage and was seized by the KGB. Award-winning journalist Monte Reel reveals how the U-2 spy program, principally devised by four men working in secret, upended the Cold War and carved a new mission for the CIA.
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Lessons Learned
- By Jim on 12-13-18
By: Monte Reel
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A Fiery Peace in a Cold War
- Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon
- By: Neil Sheehan
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 19 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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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, who led the high-stakes effort. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War is a masterly work about Schriever’s quests to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring nuclear superiority, to penetrate and exploit space for America, and to build the first weapons meant to deter an atomic holocaust.
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Schriever rhymes with beaver.
- By John Gardner on 11-13-09
By: Neil Sheehan
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The Weapon Wizards
- How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower
- By: Yaakov Katz, Amir Bohbot
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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From drones to satellites, missile defense systems to cyber warfare, Israel is leading the world when it comes to new technology being deployed on the modern battlefield. The Weapon Wizards shows how this tiny nation of 8,000,000 learned to adapt to the changes in warfare and in the defense industry and become the new prototype of a 21st century superpower, not in size, but rather in innovation and efficiency - and as a result of its long war experience.
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Good Overview, May Overstate Level of Innovation
- By JBF on 06-15-17
By: Yaakov Katz, and others
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Wise Gals
- The Spies Who Built the CIA and Changed the Future of Espionage
- By: Nathalia Holt
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In the wake of World War II, four agents were critical in helping build a new organization that we now know as the CIA. Adelaide Hawkins, Mary Hutchison, Eloise Page, and Elizabeth Sudmeier, called the “wise gals” by their male colleagues because of their sharp sense of humor and even quicker intelligence, were not the stereotypical femme fatale of spy novels.
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Intriguing untold history
- By Andrea Guzman on 12-15-22
By: Nathalia Holt
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The Watchers
- The Rise of America's Surveillance State
- By: Shane Harris
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
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Our surveillance state was born in the brain of Admiral John Poindexter in 1983. Poindexter, President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, realized that the United States might have prevented the terrorist massacre of 241 Marines in Beirut if only intelligence agencies had been able to analyze in real time data they had on the attackers. Poindexter poured government know-how and funds into his dream---a system that would sift reams of data for signs of terrorist activity.
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Important context for privacy debate
- By Keefer on 09-17-11
By: Shane Harris
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Confront and Conceal
- Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power
- By: David E. Sanger
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 15 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Three and a half years ago, David Sanger’s book The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power described how a new American president came to office with the world on fire. Now, just as the 2012 presidential election battle begins, Sanger follows up with an eye-opening, news-packed account of how Obama has dealt with those challenges, relying on innovative weapons and reconfigured tools of American power to try to manage a series of new threats.
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Sobering reminder on what the presidency requires
- By Marilyn on 09-03-12
By: David E. Sanger
What listeners say about A Nuclear Family Vacation
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- NoOne
- 09-22-13
Nuclear weapons discussed by June Cleaver
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
Possibly, depending on the friend.
Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Laural Merlington?
Anyone. A man would be fine.
Did A Nuclear Family Vacation inspire you to do anything?
Read more about our nuclear history.
Any additional comments?
It's a neat, behind the scene perspective on a hidden topic. The interviews and site descriptions make the book. As a politically charged topic, the author stays fairly neutral. This is enough to make the book readable, but there is something about the overall story that I found incredibly annoying. Perhaps some of this was that the selected narrator who sounded like June Cleaver discussing technical aspects of nuclear holocaust, perhaps it was the superficial knowledge of the author of the topic, which had little depth beyond the interviews, or perhaps it was just frustrating that a lot of the stories just never went deep enough (due in part to national security)....whatever it was, I made it though the book, but I was constantly on the verge of turning it off.
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