The Nuclear Age: An Epic Race for Arms, Power, and Survival

A comprehensive history of the geopolitics behind the nuclear arms race, from the first atomic bomb to the current rush to stockpile nuclear weapons. The nuclear age began with the explosion of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945. The beginning of this new era was embodied in the words of the bomb's main inventor, J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” From then on, the age of the atom became the age of the bomb—or two bombs: the atomic and the hydrogen. In his book "The Nuclear Age," Sergei Plokhy, one of the most prominent historians of the Cold War, explores why governments possess and stockpile nuclear weapons, and exposes the global failure to reach effective nuclear arms control treaties. Plokhy shows how, since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the threat of nuclear war has never been higher: Russia threatens nuclear aggression in its war on Ukraine; China is building hundreds of new missile silos; India and Pakistan are locked in an ongoing nuclear competition. Plokhi also addresses how more countries than ever are on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons, while new technologies, such as hypersonic missiles and artificial intelligence, make the nuclear landscape more difficult to predict. From Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the 1954 Castle Bravo test, to the rapidly evolving nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, The Nuclear Age reveals the fear that governs the spread of nuclear weapons. From H.G. Wells to Nikita Khrushchev and Vladimir Putin, Plokhy surveys the global figures who have diagnosed, stoked and influenced this fear, and identifies what we can learn from our past to control today's arms race. As the threat of nuclear war continues, The Nuclear Age diagnoses our current era of rearmament.