Download or read book A History of U S Nuclear Testing and Its Influence on Nuclear Thought 1945 1963 written by David M. Blades and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of U. S. nuclear testing between 1945 and 1963 is a vivid and exciting one, but also one of profound importance. It is a story of trailblazing scientific progress, weapons of mass destruction, superpower rivalry, accidents, radiological contamination, politics, and diplomacy. The testing of weapons that defined the course and consequences of the Cold War was itself a crucial dimension to the narrative of that conflict. Further, the central question - Why conduct nuclear tests? - was fully debated among American politicians, generals, civilians, and scientists, and ultimately it was victory for those who argued in favor of national security over diplomatic and environmental costs that normalized nuclear weapons tests. A History of U. S. Nuclear Testing and Its Influence on Nuclear Thought, 1945–1963 is an examination of this question, beginning with the road to normalization and, later, de-normalization of nuclear testing, leading to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. As states continue to pursue nuclear weaponry, nuclear testing remains an important political issue in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book A History of U S Nuclear Testing and Its Influence on Nuclear Thought 1945 1963 written by David M. Blades and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Eisenhower Science Advice and the Nuclear Test Ban Debate 1945 1963 written by Benjamin P. Greene and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on extensive research in government archives and private papers, this book analyzes the secret debate within the Eisenhower administration over the pursuit of a nuclear test-ban agreement. In contrast to much recent scholarship, this study concludes that Eisenhower strongly desired to reach an accord with the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom to cease nuclear weapons testing. For Eisenhower, a test ban would ease Cold War tensions, slow the nuclear arms race, and build confidence toward disarmament; however, he faced continual resistance from his early scientific advisers, most notably Lewis L. Strauss and Edward Teller. Extensive research into previously unavailable government archival sources and collections of private manuscripts reveals the manipulative acts of test-ban opponents and other factors that inhibited Eisenhower s actions throughout his presidency. Meticulously analyzed, these sources underscore Eisenhower's dependence on the counsel of his science advisors, such as Strauss, James R. Killian, and George B. Kistiakowsky, to determine the course he pursued in regard to several components of his national security strategy. In addition to its comprehensive analysis of the test-ban debate, this book makes important contributions to the scholarly literature assessing Eisenhower's leadership and his approach to arms control. "
Download or read book Under the Cloud written by Richard Lee Miller and published by Two-Sixty Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In "a chilling documentary history of America's above-ground nuclear tests conducted during the 1950s and early 1960s, Miller takes on the subject and universalizes it, at the same time giving it the flavor of a Dos Passos novel" ("Kirkus Reviews").
Download or read book Atomic Bomb History Declassified Account of Return to Nuclear Weapons Testing by U S After Test Moratorium 1958 1961 The Only Detailed written by U. S. Military and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-03-06 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unusually important and authoritative history report provides the only official account of major aspects of the American atomic bomb testing program, with technical and political insights into nuclear tests conducted after the test moratorium ended in 1961. The author, Dr. Bill Ogle, a scientist and manager, played a central role in the United States nuclear test program from the first explosion at Alamogordo in 1945 through the time of his death in May 1984. During the critical periods just before and following the moratorium he served as Scientific Deputy to the Military Commanders of the Joint Task Forces that were created to carry out U.S. tests in the Pacific. As Test Division Leader at Los Alamos, he was responsible also for a major part of the underground test program in Nevada.On August 22, 1958, President Eisenhower announced that the United States was ready to begin test ban negotiations on October 31, and to suspend nuclear weapons tests on that date for one year while the negotiations proceeded. The suspension might continue from year to year depending on progress in other areas. A week later Premier Khrushchev agreed to the same date for negotiations, but not to a moratorium. In fact, Soviet testing, in abeyance since March, resumed on September 20 with two very large explosions, and continued until November 3. In compliance with the President's statement, no U.S. tests were conducted after October 30. No further tests then were performed by either nation until the Soviets burst forth with an astonishing 45 shots in 65 days beginning on September 1, 1961. Of these, 14 were above a megaton, and one yielded 63 megatons -- the largest bomb ever fired by any nation. The Soviet program gave every evidence of careful and deliberate preparation.Following the 1958 test suspension, the United States dismantled most of the complex infrastructure required for its own nuclear test programs, both in Nevada and in the Pacific. Almost three years later when President Kennedy found it essential to United States interests to resume testing in response to the Soviet testing, the experience for America's testing community was technically agonizing, operationally painful, and economically very costly. The atmospheric component of test resumption had especially high political obstacles and costs. In this book, which was eight years in preparation, Ogle has provided a detailed description of the events of that period. The book does not argue for or against nuclear testing underground or in the atmosphere. Rather, it presents a comprehensive account of the major difficulties that attended U.S. test resumption in both of those environments after a period of total cessation. Dr. Ogle's book is unique in several respects. It is the only detailed account by an "insider" of United States nuclear testing. The earlier development of testing methods and weapons technology is presented as necessary background for the reader. The author, in addition to accumulating and knowledgeably screening a vast collection of original documents from the period, personally interviewed more than 70 key political, technical, and operational professionals who participated in the events described in the main part of the book. The collection of data and interviews on which this book is based will be preserved intact in the archives of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Since many of the original sources are no longer available, this archival material is unique and irreplaceable.CHAPTER I - Premoratorium Internal Readiness Activities * CHAPTER II - Test Moratorium, 1958-1961 * CHAPTER III - Return To Testing - Nevada * CHAPTER IV - Return To Atmospheric Testing - Pacific
Download or read book 100 Suns written by Michael Light and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2013-04-03 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between July 1945 and November 1962 the United States is known to have conducted 216 atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests. After the Limited Test Ban Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1963, nuclear testing went underground. It became literally invisible—but more frequent: the United States conducted a further 723 underground tests, the last in 1992. 100 Suns documents the era of visible nuclear testing, the atmospheric era, with one hundred photographs drawn by Michael Light from the archives at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. National Archives in Maryland. It includes previously classified material from the clandestine Lookout Mountain Air Force Station based in Hollywood, whose film directors, cameramen and still photographers were sworn to secrecy. The title, 100 Suns, refers to the response by J.Robert Oppenheimer to the world’s first nuclear explosion in New Mexico when he quoted a passage from the Bhagavad Gita, the classic Vedic text: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One . . . I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” This was Oppenheimer’s attempt to describe the otherwise indescribable. 100 Suns likewise confronts the indescribable by presenting without embellishment the stark evidence of the tests at the moment of detonation. Since the tests were conducted either in Nevada or the Pacific the book is simply divided between the desert and the ocean. Each photograph is presented with the name of the test, its explosive yield in kilotons or megatons, the date and the location. The enormity of the events recorded is contrasted with the understated neutrality of bare data. Interspersed within the sequence of explosions are pictures of the awestruck witnesses. The evidence of these photographs is terrifying in its implication while at same time profoundly disconcerting as a spectacle. The visual grandeur of such imagery is balanced by the chilling facts provided at the end of the book in the detailed captions, a chronology of the development of nuclear weaponry and an extensive bibliography. A dramatic sequel to Michael Light’s Full Moon, 100 Suns forms an unprecedented historical document.
Download or read book Super Bomb written by Ken Young and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-15 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Super Bomb unveils the story of the events leading up to President Harry S. Truman's 1950 decision to develop a "super," or hydrogen, bomb. That fateful decision and its immediate consequences are detailed in a diverse and complete account built on newly released archives and previously hidden contemporaneous interviews with more than sixty political, military, and scientific figures who were involved in the decision. Ken Young and Warner R. Schilling present the expectations, hopes, and fears of the key individuals who lobbied for and against developing the H-bomb. They portray the conflicts that arose over the H-bomb as rooted in the distinct interests of the Atomic Energy Commission, the Los Alamos laboratory, the Pentagon and State Department, the Congress, and the White House. But as they clearly show, once Truman made his decision in 1950, resistance to the H-bomb opportunistically shifted to new debates about the development of tactical nuclear weapons, continental air defense, and other aspects of nuclear weapons policy. What Super Bomb reveals is that in many ways the H-bomb struggle was a proxy battle over the morality and effectiveness of strategic bombardment and the role and doctrine of the US Strategic Air Command.
Download or read book The Challenges of Nuclear Non Proliferation written by Richard Dean Burns and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2015-03-12 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Challenges of Nuclear Non-Proliferation is an exhaustive survey of the many aspects of non-proliferation efforts. It explains why some nations pursued nuclear programs while others abandoned them, as well as the challenges, strengths, and weaknesses of non-proliferation efforts. It addresses key issues such as concerns over rogue states and stateless rogues, delivery systems made possible by technology, and the connection between nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, examining whether non-proliferation regimes can deal with these threats or whether economic or military sanctions need to be developed. It also examines the feasibility of eliminating or greatly reducing the number of nuclear weapons. A broad survey of one of today’s great threats to international security, this text provides undergraduates students with the tools needed to evaluate current events and global threats.
Download or read book Nuclear Weapons written by Joseph M. Siracusa and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set against the backdrop of an ever-changing international landscape, this Very Short Introduction explores both the history and politics of nuclear weapons. In this new edition, Joseph M. Siracusa includes a new concluding chapter, highlighting the significant lessons to be learnt from the history of the nuclear weapons era.
Download or read book U S Nuclear Diplomacy with Iran written by Kumuda Simpson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-12-24 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States’ commitment to non-proliferation often propels its foreign policy rhetoric. In 2002, George W. Bush framed his goal of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons within the context of the global war on terror, accusing Iran of being part of the “Axis of Evil.” Iran’s nuclear program was declared an intolerable threat to global peace and stability. This approach however showed the conflict between the rhetoric of good vs. evil and the need for a pragmatic and measured approach to non-proliferation in the Middle East. The book explores this divergence between the alarmist rhetoric of the Bush Administration’s public diplomacy and its actual non-proliferation policy toward Iran. It shows how the two policy directions, the war on terror and negotiations over the nuclear issue, were often at odds. Further, the Administration’s desire to change the regime in Iran undermined efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue. Ultimately, the policies implemented failed both to shut down Iran’s nuclear program and bring significant democratic reform within the Islamic Republic. The book also examines this legacy and how Obama’s approach differs or follows that of his predecessor. Lastly, the implications for non-proliferation policies beyond Iran are discussed, as nuclear proliferation remains a key concern in a Middle East plagued by instability.
Download or read book Nuclear Weapons A Very Short Introduction written by Joseph M. Siracusa and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-24 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nuclear weapons have not been used in anger since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Yet even after the Cold War, the Bomb is still the greatest threat facing humankind. As President Bill Clinton's first secretary of defence, Les Aspin, put it: 'The Cold War is over, the Soviet Union is no more. But the post-Cold War world is decidedly not post-nuclear'. For all the efforts to reduce nuclear stockpiles, the Bomb is here to stay. This Very Short Introduction looks at the science of nuclear weapons and how they differ from conventional weapons. Tracing the story of the nuclear bomb, Joseph Siracusa chronicles the race to acquire the H-bomb, a thermonuclear weapon with revolutionary implications; and the history of early arms control, nuclear deterrence, and non-proliferation. He also tracks the development of nuclear weapons from the origins of the Cold War in 1945 to the end of Moscow-dominated Communism in 1991, and examines the promise and prospect of missile defence, including Ronald Reagan's 'Star Wars' and George W. Bush's National Missile Defence. This third edition includes a new chapter on the development of nuclear weapons and the policies they have generated since the end of the Cold War. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book The Politics of Nuclear Weapons written by Andrew Futter and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-11-23 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensively updated second edition provides an introduction to the political, normative, technological and strategic aspects of nuclear weaponry. It offers an accessible overview of the concept of nuclear weapons, outlines how thinking about these weapons has developed and considers how nuclear threats can continue to be managed in the future. This book will help you to understand what nuclear weapons are, the science behind their creation and operation, why states build them in the first place, and whether it will be possible for the world to banish these weapons entirely. Essential reading for all students of International Relations, Security Studies and Military History.
Download or read book Violence in Place Cultural and Environmental Wounding written by Amanda Kearney and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-11-25 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human life is intimately woven into place. Through nations and homelands, monuments and sacred sites it becomes the anchorage point for ethnic, cultural and national identities. Yet it is also place that becomes the battlefield, war zone, mass grave, desecrated site and destroyed landscape in the midst or aftermath of cultural wounding. Much attention has been given to the impact of trauma and violence on human lives across generations, but what of the spaces in which it occurs? How does culturally prescribed violence impact upon place? And how do the non- human species with whom we coexist also suffer through episodes of conflict and violence? By identifying violence in place as a crisis of our times, and by encouraging both the witnessing and the diagnosing of harm, this book reveals the greater effects of cultural wounding. It problematises the habit of separating human life out from the ecologies in which it is held. If people and place are bound through kinship, whether through necessity and survival, or choice and abiding love, then wounding is co- terminus. The harms done to one will impact upon the other. Case studies from Australia, North and South America, Europe and the Pacific, illustrate the impact of violence in place, while supporting a campaign for methodologies that reveal the fullness of the relational bond between people and place. The book will appeal to students and practitioners alike, with interests in cultural and human geography, anthropology, environmental humanities and moral ecology.
Download or read book The Nuclear Taboo written by Nina Tannenwald and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-12-20 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why have nuclear weapons not been used since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945? Nina Tannenwald disputes the conventional answer of 'deterrence' in favour of what she calls a nuclear taboo - a widespread inhibition on using nuclear weapons - which has arisen in global politics. Drawing on newly released archival sources, Tannenwald traces the rise of the nuclear taboo, the forces that produced it, and its influence, particularly on US leaders. She analyzes four critical instances where US leaders considered using nuclear weapons (Japan 1945, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War 1991) and examines how the nuclear taboo has repeatedly dissuaded US and other world leaders from resorting to these 'ultimate weapons'. Through a systematic analysis, Tannenwald challenges conventional conceptions of deterrence and offers a compelling argument on the moral bases of nuclear restraint as well as an important insight into how nuclear war can be avoided in the future.
Download or read book India Pakistan Nuclear Diplomacy written by Mario E. Carranza and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-07-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using a constructivist model, this study brings nuclear arms control and disarmament back into the debates on the future of Indo-Pakistani relations. Constructivism recognizes the independent impact of international norms, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Norm (NNPN), on India and Pakistan’s nuclear behavior. Even though the NNPN does not legally bind them, it is reinforced at the global level, and may lead the South Asian rivals to move in the direction of nuclear arms control and disarmament, thus reducing the costs, dangers, and risks of an eternal strategic rivalry. After examining the main tenets of constructivism in international relations, the works delves into the proliferation debate, discussing nuclear reversal and U.S. policy toward the subcontinent since the G. W. Bush administration. It looks at the prospects for nuclear arms control and disarmament in South Asia after the U.S.-India nuclear deal of 2008, and the nuclear abolitionist wave during the first Obama administration. It concludes with the contribution of social constructivism to understanding how changes in the India-Pakistan nuclear status quo can happen.
Download or read book Gyorgy Kepes written by John R. Blakinger and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Gyorgy Kepes, the last disciple of Bauhaus modernism, became the single most significant artist within a network of scientific experts and elites. Gyorgy Kepes (1906–2001) was the last disciple of Bauhaus modernism, an acolyte of László Moholy-Nagy and a self-styled revolutionary artist. But by midcentury, transplanted to America, Kepes found he was trapped in the military-industrial-aesthetic complex. In this first book-length study of Kepes, John Blakinger argues that Kepes, by opening the research laboratory to the arts, established a new paradigm for creative practice: the artist as technocrat. First at Chicago's New Bauhaus and then for many years at MIT, Kepes pioneered interdisciplinary collaboration between the arts and sciences—what he termed “interthinking” and “interseeing.” Kepes and his colleagues—ranging from metallurgists to mathematicians—became part of an important but little-explored constellation: the Cold War avant-garde. Blakinger traces Kepes's career in the United States through a series of episodes: Kepes's work with the military on camouflage techniques; his development of a visual design pedagogy, as seen in the exhibition The New Landscape and his book The New Landscape in Art and Science; his encyclopedic Vision + Value series; his unpublished magnum opus, the Light Book; the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS), an art-science research institute established by Kepes at MIT in 1967; and the Center's proposals for massive environmental installations that would animate the urban landscape. CAVS was entangled in the antiwar politics of the late 1960s, as many students and faculty protested MIT's partnerships with defense contractors—some of whom had ties to the Center. In attempting to “undream” the Bauhaus into existence in the postwar world, Kepes faced profound resistance. Generously illustrated, drawing on the vast archive of Kepes's papers at Stanford and MIT's CAVS Special Collection, this book supplies a missing chapter in our understanding of midcentury modern and Cold War visual culture.
Download or read book Surviving Amid Chaos written by Louis René Beres and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-04-04 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now facing a genuinely unprecedented configuration of existential threats, Israel's leaders must decide whether to continue their deliberate nuclear ambiguity policy (the "bomb in the basement") as they consider such urgent and overlapping survival issues as regional nuclear proliferation, Jihadist terror-group intersections with enemy states, rationality or irrationality of state and sub-state adversaries, assassination or "targeted killing," preemption, and the probable effects of a "Cold War II" between Russia and the United States. Israel must develop a strategic posture that will involve a suitably coherent and refined nuclear strategy. This book critically examines Israel's rapidly evolving nuclear strategy in light of these issues and explains how it underscores the overarching complexity of strategic interactions in the Middle East.
