Books like Inheriting the Bomb

Jacobsen’s terrifying account of how rapidly global nuclear destruction can happen is why I’ve already recommended it to many colleagues and friends. It reminded me of Jonathon Schell’s The Fate of the Earth that was one of the factors in my decision to join the Bethlehem Peace Pilgrimage.

By describing the interlocking U.S. launch detection, command and control, and delivery systems, Nuclear War provides readers with a realistic series of events that demonstrate the dangers of maintaining nuclear arsenals. Even though I have read scores of books regarding nuclear weapons over the last 45 years, this book gave me new insights and renewed my sense of urgency to achieve a world without these destructive weapons.

I love this book because it explains complex matters in straightforward language. What is the purpose of arms control? Why do leaders agree to it? How did agreements come about? Why is reducing nuclear risk so difficult? You can answer those questions using elaborate theories and stultifying language, yet Tom Graham and Damien LaVera frame the texts of agreement with highly readable introductory essays.

Graham served for many years as the General Counsel of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and you can sense his passion for precision. “The START I Treaty, in its detailed complexity, is a lawyer’s dream,” they write in this book. There is so much about that 1991 agreement that blows my mind. START is not even in its name in the actual treaty. We call it START I only because of START II, which US and Russian leaders would later sign but would never enter… show more.

Togzhan Kassenova’s book tells the story of one of the overlooked crimes of the twentieth century: the Soviet Union’s assault on Kazakhstan through careless nuclear testing—this devasted generations of Kazakhs and other non-Russian people. Kassenova also shows the terrifying prospects of what the collapse of the Soviet Union could have entailed.

There were unexploded nuclear devices buried underground and unguarded highly-enriched uranium that very bad people wanted to acquire to build their own bombs. Motivated by its history as a nuclear playground, Kazakhstan contributed to one of the great miracles of our time: the non-proliferation of the massive Soviet nuclear stockpile (some 27,000 warheads at the end of the Cold War) throughout the 1990s. Policymakers rightly worry about states like Iran and North Korea—as they rightly worried about Libya and Iraq in the 1990s and early 2000s.

For the most part, the AQ Khan network—not the Soviet arsenal—made those fears… show more.

I recommend this book because it tells the inside story of what it is like to actually negotiate and get a nuclear arms accord ratified. The word “negotiate” means several things here. For Rose Gottemoeller—as with any head of a delegation—nearly everything required some form of negotiation.

At times I found myself thinking: one-on-one sessions with her hawkish Russian counterpart (Anatoly Antonov, who is currently the Russian Ambassador to the United States) must have been the most pleasant part of the whole ordeal. In that setting, at least you know where the other side stands. There is also mutual empathy between the top negotiators regarding bureaucratic turf wars and demands from on high—such as “get this done by X date.”

Previous nuclear agreements came about during a time of relative political consensus—when President Barack Obama sent Gottemoeller to Capital Hill to generate support for New START after he signed it… show more.

It’s hard to overstate just how influential Marc Trachtenberg’s A Constructed Peace, and really all of his writing, has been on my thinking. I constantly return to its pages and find fresh insights each time. I’m drawn in by the writing style, but the substance is even more impressive. The book—examining British, French, Soviet, West German, and U.S. policy—was what first opened my eyes to the centrality of Germany and debates on nuclear control in the origins and evolution of the Cold War. U.S. efforts to offset the Soviet challenge and reduce the U.S. continental commitment by reviving West Germany and then essentially providing it with nuclear weapons contributed to some of the Cold War’s most dangerous crises.

A novel about a young woman who worked on the atomic bomb and fell in love with one of the other scientists on the project who breaks her heart into a million pieces so she abandons her career and takes up as a shop-girl? Add in an FBI agent who is on the tail of the cad and wants her help in finding him? Count me in!

Fields is terrific at creating mood and the 1950s milieu. And the unexpected romance between Rosalind, the one-time scientist, and Charlie, the FBI agent, is both moving and immensely satisfying—these are two wounded souls who manage to find each other and by the end, you’re out of your chair and cheering.

It was hard to choose one among this prolific author’s many wonderful historical thrillers. 

Triple makes my list because of the intricate and enthralling plot about the race among Middle East enemies Israel and Egypt to develop nuclear weapons. It has compelling characters, a riveting love story, and takes place in part in the pivotal year of 1947.

I found it very interesting how this book provides the background of the development of Soviet nuclear science and the creation of the atomic and hydrogen bombs in the Soviet Union.

It is written by a historian; the narrative is accurate yet accessible. It helped me understand how a country having suffered terrible losses in a devastating war and obsolete infrastructure could become one of the two mightiest superpowers due to its ruthless concentration of resources to a chosen goal and a group of scientists among the world’s best. 

You can’t approve of Ursula Kuczynski, codename ‘Sonya’.

She was a spymaster, bomb-maker, and secret agent for the Soviet Union. Her work helped the Soviets build the atom bomb. But you can’t help being intrigued by this devoted wife and mother-of-three who rode her bicycle across the countryside to gather scientific information and used her children’s teddies to smuggle radio parts.

Ursula’s story, told by Macintyre in forensic, referenced detail, is astonishing. This cool, clever woman fooled everyone. I’m fascinated by the photographs, too; one of her cuddled up with her children in the garden, another of her in Berlin selling communist literature from a book barrow. They added to the feeling of alarm; so much went on in clear view.

This is a collection of Oppenheimer’s essays and speeches, a good thing to read to get a sense of the man himself, how he thinks, how he handles language.

How he struggles to suggest how civilization might begin to cope with the reality that new weapons now exist capable of annihilating civilization... “unless we show,” he says, ”urged by our own example and conviction, that we regard nuclear armament as a transitory, dangerous and degrading phase of the world’s history.”

He said that forty years ago, and counting.