In Mortal Hands
A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age
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Narrated by:
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Erik Davies
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By:
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Stephanie Cooke
About this listen
This landmark history of nuclear power is perfectly timed for today, when Americans are gravely concerned with nuclear terrorism, and a nuclear renaissance is seen as a possible solution to global warming. Few have truly come to terms with the complexities of an issue which may determine the future of the planet. Nuclear weapons, it was once hoped, would bring wars to a close; instead, they spurred a massive arms race that has recently expanded to include North Korea and Iran. Once seen as a source of unlimited electricity, nuclear reactors breed contamination and have been used as covers for secret weapons programs from India and Pakistan to Iraq and Iran.
The evolving story of nuclear power, as told by industry insider Stephanie Cooke, reveals the gradual deepening of our understanding of the pros and cons of this controversial energy source. Drawing on her unprecedented access, Cooke shows us how, time and again, the stewards of the nuclear age - the more-is-better military commanders and civilian nuclear boosters - have fallen into the traps of their own hubris and wishful thinking as they tried to manage the unmanageable. Their mistakes are on the verge of being repeated again, which is why this book deserves especially close attention now.
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- 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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Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster
- By: Susan Stranahan, David Lochbaum, The Union of Concerned Scientists, and others
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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On March 11, 2011, an earthquake large enough to knock the earth from its axis sent a massive tsunami speeding toward the Japanese coast and the aging and vulnerable Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactors. Over the following weeks, the world watched in horror as a natural disaster became a man-made catastrophe: fail-safes failed, cooling systems shut down, nuclear rods melted.
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Internal workings of the NRC
- By Eduards J. Vucins on 05-11-14
By: Susan Stranahan, and others
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The Oil Kings
- How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East
- By: Andrew Scott Cooper
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 19 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Struggling with a recession... European nations at risk of defaulting on their loans... A possible global financial crisis. It happened before, in the 1970s. The Oil Kings is the story of how oil came to dominate U.S. domestic and international affairs. Brilliantly reported and filled with astonishing details about some of the key figures of the time, this is the history of an era that we thought we knew, an era whose momentous reverberations still influence events at home and abroad today.
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Great story, but ignores the economic side
- By Walter on 04-15-12
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Burning the Sky
- Operation Argus and the Untold Story of the Cold War Nuclear Tests in Outer Space
- By: Mark Wolverton
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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After the Soviet Union proved to the United States that it possessed an operational intercontinental ballistic missile with the launch of Sputnik in October 1957, the world watched anxiously as the two superpowers engaged in a game of nuclear one-upmanship. Amid this rising tension, eccentric physicist Nicholas Christofilos brought forth an outlandish, albeit ingenious, idea to defend the US from a Soviet attack: detonating nuclear warheads in space to create an artificial radiation belt that would fry incoming ICBMs. Known as Operation Argus, this plan is the most secret and riskiest experiment in history, and classified details of these nuclear tests have been long obscured.
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Extraordinary interesting history
- By Magnus Almgren on 10-23-20
By: Mark Wolverton
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The Age of Radiance
- The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era
- By: Craig Nelson
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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From the New York Times best-selling author of Rocket Men and the award-winning biographer of Thomas Paine comes the first complete history of the Atomic Age, a brilliant, magisterial account of the men and women who uncovered the secrets of the nucleus, brought its power to America, and ignited the 20th century.
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Strong finish
- By David's Opinions and Reviews on 05-04-14
By: Craig Nelson
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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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The War State
- The Cold War Origins Of The Military-Industrial Complex And The Power Elite, 1945-1963
- By: Michael Swanson
- Narrated by: Larry Wayne
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Today when you factor in the interest on the national debt from past wars and total defense expenditures the United States spends almost 40% of its federal budget on the military. It accounts for over 46% of total world arms spending. Before World War II it spent almost nothing on defense and hardly anyone paid any income taxes. You can't have big wars without big government. Such big expenditures are now threatening to harm the national economy.
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Surprisingly Good
- By ohmie on 04-22-14
By: Michael Swanson
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Raven Rock
- The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself - While the Rest of Us Die
- By: Garrett M. Graff
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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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 - a road map that spans from the dawn of the nuclear age to today.
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Awesome Read!!
- By Brewer Richardson on 05-05-17
By: Garrett M. Graff
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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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My Journey at the Nuclear Brink
- By: William Perry
- Narrated by: Kevin F Spalding
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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My Journey at the Nuclear Brink is a continuation of William J. Perry's efforts to keep the world safe from a nuclear catastrophe. It tells the story of his coming of age in the nuclear era, his role in trying to shape and contain it, and how his thinking has changed about the threat these weapons pose. In a remarkable career, Perry has dealt firsthand with the changing nuclear threat.
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His journey has just begun
- By Amazon Customer on 04-18-17
By: William Perry
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Racing for the Bomb
- The True Story of General Leslie R. Groves, the Man Behind the Birth of the Atomic Age
- By: Robert S. Norris
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 23 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Revealed for the first time in Racing for the Bomb, Groves played a crucial and decisive role in the planning, timing, and targeting of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions. Norris offers new insights into the complex and controversial questions surrounding the decision to drop the bomb in Japan and Groves' actions during World War II, which had a lasting imprint on the nuclear age and the Cold War that followed.
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Fascinating
- By Jean on 04-22-15
By: Robert S. Norris