American Arsenal
A Century of Waging War
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Narrated by:
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Dennis Holland
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By:
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Patrick Coffey
About this listen
When America declared war on Germany in 1917, the United States had only 200,000 men under arms, a 20th of the German army's strength, and its planes were no match for the German air force. Less than a century later, the United States today has by far the world's largest military budget and provides over 40% of the world's armaments.In American Arsenal Patrick Coffey examines America's military transformation from an isolationist state to a world superpower. Focusing on 15 specific developments, Coffey illustrates the unplanned, often haphazard nature of this transformation, which has been driven by political, military, technological, and commercial interests. Beginning with Thomas Edison's work on submarine technology, American Arsenal moves from World War I to the present conflicts in the Middle East, covering topics from chemical weapons, strategic bombing, and the nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union, to "smart" bombs, hand-held anti-aircraft missiles, and the Predator and other drone aircrafts. Coffey traces the story of each advance in weaponry from drawing board to battlefield, and includes fascinating portraits of the men who invented and deployed them:
- Edward Teller, "the father of the hydrogen bomb"
- Robert Oppenheimer, head of atomic bomb design at Los Alamos
- Curtis LeMay, who led the fire-bombing of Japan
- Herman Kahn, nuclear strategist and a model for Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove
- Abraham Karem, inventor of the Predator
- And many others
Coffey also examines the increasingly detached nature of modern American warfare - the ultimate goal is to remove soldiers from the battlefield entirely - which limits casualties (211,454 in Vietnam and only 1,231 in the Gulf War) but also lessens the political and psychological costs of going to war. Examining the backstories of every major American weapons development, American Arsenal is essential listening for anyone interested in the continuing evolution of the U.S. defense program.
Download the accompanying reference guide.©2014 Patrick Coffey (P)2014 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- Narrated by: Christopher Newton, Sharon Hornfischer
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Overall
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Performance
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-
-
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A Biased Look at A Great Air Force Leader
- By Bishop on 02-11-20
By: Barrett Tillman
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The Doomsday Machine
- By: Daniel Ellsberg
- Narrated by: Steven Cooper
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The Doomsday Machine is Ellsberg's hair-raising insider's account of the most dangerous arms buildup in the history of civilization, whose legacy - and renewal under the Obama administration - threatens the very survival of humanity. It is scarcely possible to estimate the true dangers of our present nuclear policies without penetrating the secret realities of the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years, when Ellsberg had high-level access to them.
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Fascinating Insider Story
- By Terry Masters on 12-07-17
By: Daniel Ellsberg
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The Pentagon's Brain
- An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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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. No one has ever written the history of the Defense Department's most secret, most powerful, and most controversial military science R&D agency. In the first-ever history about the organization, New York Times best-selling author Annie Jacobsen draws on inside sources, exclusive interviews, private documents, and declassified memos to paint a picture of DARPA, or "the Pentagon's brain".
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Scientia Est Potentia/Knowledge is Power
- By Cynthia on 10-08-15
By: Annie Jacobsen
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Firestorm
- Allied Airpower and the Destruction of Dresden
- By: Marshall De Bruhl
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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On February 13 and 14, 1945, three successive waves of British and U.S. aircraft rained down thousands of tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs on the largely undefended German city of Dresden. Night and day, Dresden was engulfed in a vast sea of flame, a firestorm that generated 1,500-degree temperatures and hurricane-force winds. Thousands suffocated in underground shelters where they had fled to escape the inferno above.
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slanted view of air attacks during war
- By Ed Yusis on 03-31-14
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The Imagineers of War
- The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World
- By: Sharon Weinberger
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 16 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The definitive history of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon agency that has quietly shaped war and technology for nearly 60 years. Founded in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik, the agency's original mission was to create "the unimagined weapons of the future". Over the decades, DARPA has been responsible for countless inventions and technologies that extend well beyond military technology.
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Blandly written story about DARPA politics
- By Syed on 04-18-17
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The Twilight War
- The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran
- By: David Crist
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 25 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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For the past three decades, the United States and Iran have been engaged in an unacknowledged secret war. This conflict has frustrated five American presidents, divided administrations, and repeatedly threatened to bring the two nations to the brink of open warfare. Drawing upon unparalleled access to senior officials and key documents of several US administrations, David Crist, a senior historian in the federal government, breaks new ground in virtually every section of The Twilight War.
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Most authoritative book on conflict on Iran, hands down.
- By David Free on 07-14-19
By: David Crist
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Dark Sun
- The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
- By: Richard Rhodes
- Narrated by: Richard Rhodes
- Length: 6 hrs
- Abridged
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Richard Rhodes' landmark history of the atomic bomb won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Now, in this majestic new masterpiece of history, science, and politics, he tells for the first time the secret story of how and why the hydrogen bomb was made, and traces the path by which this supreme artifact of 20th-century technology became the defining issue of the Cold War.
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Abridged??
- By Delano on 04-17-13
By: Richard Rhodes
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The Making of the Atomic Bomb
- 25th Anniversary Edition
- By: Richard Rhodes
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 37 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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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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One Minute to Midnight
- Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
- By: Michael Dobbs
- Narrated by: Bob Walter
- Length: 16 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be sliding inexorably toward a nuclear conflict over the placement of missiles in Cuba. Veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has pored over previously untapped American, Soviet, and Cuban sources to produce the most authoritative book yet on the Cuban missile crisis.
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On the verge of annihilation.
- By MikeCG on 01-22-09
By: Michael Dobbs
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The Dead Hand
- The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy
- By: David E. Hoffman
- Narrated by: Bob Walter
- Length: 20 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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The Dead Hand is the suspense-filled story of the people who sought to brake the speeding locomotive of the arms race, then rushed to secure the nuclear and biological weapons left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union—a dangerous legacy that haunts us even today.The Cold War was an epoch of massive overkill.
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Eye opening
- By Brian on 11-16-10
By: David E. Hoffman
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Kill Chain
- The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins
- By: Andrew Cockburn
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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This essential, pause-resister narrative on the history of drone warfare by the acclaimed author of Rumsfeld explores how this practice emerged, who made it happen, and the real consequences of targeted killing.
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Introduction
- By Batman on 03-24-15
By: Andrew Cockburn
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Shadow Strike
- Inside Israel's Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power
- By: Yaakov Katz
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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On September 6, 2007, shortly after midnight, Israeli fighters advanced on Deir ez-Zour in Syria. Israel often flew into Syria as a warning to President Bashar al-Assad. But this time, there was no warning and no explanation. This was a covert operation, with one goal: to destroy a nuclear reactor being built by North Korea under a tight veil of secrecy in the Syrian desert. Shadow Strike tells, for the first time, the story of the espionage, military might and psychological warfare behind Israel’s operation to stop one of the greatest known acts of nuclear proliferation.
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Important Book!
- By Gerald J. Vogt on 05-10-19
By: Yaakov Katz
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First War of Physics
- The Secret History of the Atom Bomb 1939-1949
- By: Jim Baggott
- Narrated by: Mark Ashby
- Length: 17 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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An epic story of science and technology at the very limits of human understanding: the monumental race to build the first atomic weapons.
Rich in personality, action, confrontation, and deception, The First War of Physics is the first fully realized popular account of the race to build humankind's most destructive weapon. The book draws on declassified material, such as MI6's Farm Hall transcripts, coded Soviet messages cracked by American cryptographers in the Venona project, and interpretations by Russian scholars of documents from the Soviet archives.
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For all atom bomb and physics nerds
- By Jodie Swafford on 11-30-18
By: Jim Baggott
What listeners say about American Arsenal
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Cetra777
- 02-09-18
unflinching look at warfare
The author tells the story of the deeply flawed men who doomed the 20th century and whose hubris haunts us even now. With the threat of large scale war on the rise this book is more relevant now than at publication.
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