First published in 1976, The Advisors is an absorbing look at the technical, strategic, and human aspects of the great debate that led to the decision to build the first hydrogen bomb, Based on the author's own participation in Project Superbomb, on interviews with other participants, and on declassified documents, this book explains the complete background to this major acceleration of the nuclear arms race. For this reissue, the author has written a new Preface and Epilogue. The reissue also includes a recently declassified essay by Hans A. Bethe discussing the history of the H-bomb...

This book offers state-of-the-art reinterpretations of the reasons for Japan's decision to surrender: Which was the critical factor, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the Soviet Union's entry into the war? Writing from the perspective of three different nationalities and drawing on newly available documents from Japan, the United States, and the former Soviet Union, five distinguished historians review the evidence and the arguments--and agree to disagree. The contributors are Barton J. Bernstein, Richard Frank, Sumio Hatano, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, and David Holloway.

Based on previously unavailable sources, this book reveals the Anglo-American intelligence effort to penetrate the most secret domain of the Soviet government-its nuclear weapons program.

For eight years President Dwight Eisenhower claimed to pursue peace and national security. Yet his policies entrenched the United States in a seemingly permanent cold war, a spiraling nuclear arms race, and a deepening state of national insecurity. Ira Chernus uncovers the key to this paradox in Eisenhower's unwavering commitment to a consistent way of talking, in private as well as in public, about the cold war rivalry. Contrary to what most historians have concluded, Eisenhower never aimed at any genuine rapprochement with the Soviet Union. He discourse always assumed that the United States...

James Franck (1882-1964) was one of the twentieth century's most respected scientists, known both for his contributions to physics and for his moral courage. During the 1920s, Franck was a prominent figure in the German physics community. His research into the structure of the atom earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1925. After the Nazis seized power in 1933, Franck resigned his professorship at Gottingen in protest against anti-Jewish policies. He soon emigrated to the United States, where, at the University of Chicago, he began innovative research into photosynthesis. When the Second...