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....

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

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.

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

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

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.

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....

From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Her Name and Titanic, this masterpiece of nonfiction arrives in time to honor the eightieth anniversary of the bomb dropping on Hiroshima.

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.

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....

From the New York Times bestselling author of When the Sea Came Alive and The Only Plane in the Sky, a sweeping and comprehensive oral history of the atomic bomb’s creation and deployment, marking the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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

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

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....

It's 1942 and the Nazis are racing to be the first to build a weapon unlike any known before. They have the physicists, they have the uranium, and now all their plans depend on amassing a single ingredient....

From best-selling author John U. Bacon, a gripping narrative history of the largest manmade detonation prior to Hiroshima....

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....

A sweeping history of tragic genius, cutting-edge science, and the discovery that changed billions of lives - including your own....

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

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....

In this comprehensive guide to the most widespread conflict in contemporary history, Vladislav Zubok traces the origins of the Cold War in post-war Europe, through the tumultuous decades of confrontation, to the fall of the Berlin Wall and beyond.

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....

Based on 15 years of research, Glock is the riveting story of the weapon that has become known as America’s gun....

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....