The Bomb: A New History - Hardcover

From his years at Los Alamos and the Nevada Test Site to his meetings with nuclear arms experts in Moscow, former weapons designer Stephen M. Younger has witnessed firsthand the making of nuclear policy. With a deep understanding of both the technology and the politics behind nuclear weapons, he guides us from the Manhattan Project to the Cold War and into the present day, illuminating how nuclear weapons fit into our globalized, war-plagued world. Does the United States genuinely need a massive stockpile in an era of precision bombs and missile defense? Under what circumstances might we need nuclear weapons in the future? How does the proliferation of weapons in the hands of other nations affect our own nuclear policy?

With startling clarity, Younger reveals how weapons work, the myths and realities of what happens after a nuclear explosion, and how our nuclear policy evolved to what it is today. The Bomb is a compelling call to debate, and to action, that no one can afford to ignore.

Stephen M. Younger is a senior policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He recently retired as a senior fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he was in charge of nuclear weapons research and development. From 2001 to 2004, he was director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at the U.S. Department of Defense. He lives in Las Vegas.