Download or read book The Essential Herman Kahn written by Herman Kahn and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the time of his untimely death in 1983, Herman Kahn was recognized by both friends and intellectual adversaries as "one of the world's most creative and best minds." The current growing resurgence of interest in Kahn's ideas and intellectual legacy demonstrates the enduring relevance of his work. Yet, in spite of the constant influence of his arguments, there is a shortage of books summarizing Kahn's essential contributions, and thus his work is not as well known as it should be. The Essential Herman Kahn is an attempt to cope with this predicament and offer the public for the first time an anthology consisting of the essence of Kahn's work, organized thematically. The two decades that have passed since his death allow us today to approach his work undisturbed by the "sound and fury" of the many public debates and controversies he participated in and to focus on some of the deepest and most enduring dimensions of his intellectual contributions. The anthology will try to bring together, out of the several thousands pages published by Kahn during his life, the "essential Kahn," the most relevant, consequential and interesting themes, ideas and arguments defining his legacy. As such it will met the needs of those who are interested in Kahn's work but do not have the time and energy to access his out-of-print books, to make their way through the voluminous number of pages, and then to sort out the essential from the accidental, the perennial from the contextual.
Download or read book The Worlds of Herman Kahn written by Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Herman Kahn was the only nuclear strategist in America who might have made a living as a standup comedian. In telling his story, Ghamari-Tabrizi captures an era that is still very much with us--a time whose innocence, gruesome nuclear humor, and outrageous but deadly serious visions of annihilation have their echoes in the "known unknowns and unknown unknowns" that guide policymakers in our own embattled world.
Download or read book On Escalation written by Herman Kahn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this widely discussed and influential book, Herman Kahn probes the dynamics of escalation and demonstrates how the intensification of conflict can be depicted by means of a definite escalation ladder, ascent of which brings opponents closer to all-out war. At each rung of the ladder, before the climb proceeds, decisions must be made based on numerous choices. Some are clear and obvious, others obscure, but the options are always there. Thermonuclear annihilation, says Kahn, is unlikely to come through accident; but nations may elect to climb the ladder to extinction. The basic material for the book was developed in briefings delivered by Kahn to military and civilian experts and revised in the light of his findings of a trip to Vietnam in the 1960s. In On Escalation he states the facts squarely. He asks the reader to face unemotionally the terrors of a world fully capable of suicide and to consider carefully the alternatives to such a path. In the never-never land of nuclear warfare, where nuclear incredulity is pervasive and paralyzing to the imagination even for the professional analyst, salient details of possible scenarios for the outbreak of war, and even more for war fighting, are largely unexplored or even unnoticed. For scenarios in which war is terminated, the issues and possibilities of which are almost completely unstudied, the situation is even worse. Kahn's discussion throws light on the terrain and gives the individual a sense of the range of possibilities and complexities involved and are useful.
Download or read book War s Logic written by Antulio J. Echevarria II and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveys how American strategic theorists have understood the nature and character of war in the twentieth century.
Download or read book Thinking about the Unthinkable written by Herman Kahn and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book On War and Morality written by Robert L. Holmes and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The threat to the survival of humankind posed by nuclear weapons has been a frightening and essential focus of public debate for the last four decades and must continue to be so if we are to avoid destroying ourselves and the natural world around us. One unfortunate result of preoccupation with the nuclear threat, however, has been a new kind of "respectability" accorded to conventional war. In this radical and cogent argument for pacifism, Robert Holmes asserts that all war--not just nuclear war--has become morally impermissible in the modern world. Addressing a wide audience of informed and concerned readers, he raises dramatic questions about the concepts of "political realism" and nuclear deterrence, makes a number of persuasive suggestions for nonviolent alternatives to war, and presents a rich panorama of thinking about war from St. Augustine to Reinhold Niebuhr and Herman Kahn. Holmes's positions are compellingly presented and will provoke discussion both among convinced pacifists and among those whom he calls "militarists." "Militarists," we realize after reading this book, include the majority of us who live a friendly and peaceful personal life while supporting a system which, if Holmes is correct, guarantees war and risks eventual human extinction. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book The Second Nuclear Age written by Paul Bracken and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-11-13 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading international security strategist offers a compelling new way to "think about the unthinkable." The cold war ended more than two decades ago, and with its end came a reduction in the threat of nuclear weapons—a luxury that we can no longer indulge. It's not just the threat of Iran getting the bomb or North Korea doing something rash; the whole complexion of global power politics is changing because of the reemergence of nuclear weapons as a vital element of statecraft and power politics. In short, we have entered the second nuclear age. In this provocative and agenda-setting book, Paul Bracken of Yale University argues that we need to pay renewed attention to nuclear weapons and how their presence will transform the way crises develop and escalate. He draws on his years of experience analyzing defense strategy to make the case that the United States needs to start thinking seriously about these issues once again, especially as new countries acquire nuclear capabilities. He walks us through war-game scenarios that are all too realistic, to show how nuclear weapons are changing the calculus of power politics, and he offers an incisive tour of the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia to underscore how the United States must not allow itself to be unprepared for managing such crises. Frank in its tone and farsighted in its analysis, The Second Nuclear Age is the essential guide to the new rules of international politics.
Download or read book Thinking about the Unthinkable in the 1980s written by Herman Kahn and published by New York : Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1984 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this reconsideration of his controversial study Thinking about the Unthinkable (1962), Kahn addresses deterrence concepts and specific arms control issues which are likely to remain at the forefront of the nuclear debate. Taking into account the political, technical and moral developments of the past 20 years, he argues that since nuclear weapons exist and cannot be disinvented, it is crucial to maintain a militarily strong United States, while making every effort to enhance deterrence. He believes that for a government to pursue deterrence at any cost, without contingency plans, is not only irresponsible but immoral; and that the only justification for maintaining a nuclear arsenal is to deter, balance or correct the use of nuclear weapons by others. ISBN 0-671-47544-4 : $16.95.
Download or read book Soldiers of Reason written by Alex Abella and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2009 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This history of the RAND Corporation, written with full access to its archives, is a page-turning chronicle of the rise of the secretive think tank that has been the driving force behind the American government for 60 years.
Download or read book Counsels of War written by Gregg Herken and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2015-02-18 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the first atomic bomb was exploded in 1945, a close community of civilian experts, including scientists, academics, and think-tank intellectuals, has advised the American government on the prospects of nuclear war. Based on interviews with these experts, as well as hundreds of pages of recently declassified documents, Counsels of War is the first book to trace in detail the deliberations and shifting recommendations of the experts on the bomb from Hiroshima to "Star Wars." Gregg Herken writes about the people whose profession it has been to think about the unthinkable—Robert McNamara, Paul Nitze, Herman Kahn, Bernard Brodie—including their intense rivalries, personal animosities, and often contentious relationship with the professional military. He reveals how the influence of the scientist and strategist has extended well beyond the laboratory and the classroom—in the proposal of Kennedy's advisers for a nuclear "demonstration" and even a "clever first-strike" against the Russians, for example. Counsels of War also shatters certain popular assumptions about U.S. nuclear policy. As Herken points out, while American doctrine stresses "retaliation," U.S. strategists have always planned to "pre-empt" a Soviet attack. Herken shows that the lines in the current nuclear debate were actually drawn at the dawn of the atomic age, and that the experts' technically abstruse arguments have only served to hide from the public the fundamental, deeply held—and quite subjective—differences at the heart of the debate. Since Hiroshima, there has been a growing awareness of the peril created by nuclear weapons, yet the crucial questions that were never adequately addressed in 1945 unanswered today. Given the inability of the experts to confront the essential dilemma of the nuclear age, Counsels of War calls for a new nuclear debate, one focused on American rather than Soviet intentions and that seeks an answer to the fundamental, yet still unresolved question: What are these weapons for?
Download or read book On Thermonuclear War written by Herman Kahn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Thermonuclear War was controversial when originally published and remains so today. It is iconoclastic, crosses disciplinary boundaries, and finally it is calm and compellingly reasonable. The book was widely read on both sides of the Iron Curtain and the result was serious revision in both Western and Soviet strategy and doctrine. As a result, both sides were better able to avoid disaster during the Cold War. The strategic concepts still apply: defense, local animosities, and the usual balance-of-power issues are still very much with us. Kahn's stated purpose in writing this book was simply: "avoiding disaster and buying time, without specifying the use of this time." By the late 1950s, with both sides H-bomb-armed, reason and time were in short supply. Kahn, a military analyst at Rand since 1948, understood that a defense based only on thermonuclear arnaments was inconceivable, morally questionable, and not credible.The book was the first to make sense of nuclear weapons. Originally created from a series of lectures, it provides insight into how policymakers consider such issues. One may agree with Kahn or disagree with him on specific issues, but he clearly defined the terrain of the argument. He also looks at other weapons of mass destruction such as biological and chemical, and the history of their use. The Cold War is over, but the nuclear genie is out of the bottle, and the lessons and principles developed in On Thermonuclear War apply as much to today's China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as they did to the Soviets.
Download or read book Ten Common Pitfalls written by Herman Kahn and published by . This book was released on 1957 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Year 2000 written by Herman Kahn and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book World Economic Development written by Herman Kahn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-11 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the prospects for world economic development. It focuses primarily on the period from 1978 to 2000 and pays particular attention to the earlier part of that interval. The book examines some of the more immediate problems and issues associated with the process of economic growth.
Download or read book Bobby and Mandee s Good Touch Bad Touch written by Robert Kahn and published by Future Horizons. This book was released on 2011-07 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduces the topic of sexual abuse, and how children can protect themselves. Includes questions to gauge the child's understanding, and tips for parents.
Download or read book To Win a Nuclear War written by Michio Kaku and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To Win a Nuclear War records as fully as we are likely to find what has gone on in the minds of American leaders and nuclear strategists on this awesome subject during these fateful forty years. It is an appalling story... This book compels us to re-think and re-write the history of the Cold War and the arms race."--From the foreword by Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General of the United States. To Win a Nuclear War provides a startling glimpse into secret U.S. plans to initiate a nuclear war from 1945 to the present. Based on recently declassified Top Secret documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, this book meticulously traces how U.S. policy makers in over a dozen episodes have threatened to initiate a nuclear attack. The book also documents the surprising reasons why the war plans were never carried out and discloses the deeper, hidden meaning of the Star Wars program.
Download or read book On Thermonuclear War written by Herman Kahn and published by Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1961 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
