The most recommended books on nuclear weapons

The author of this book was also a Crossroads participant and today is regarded as one of the foremost experts on the effects of ionizing radiation. His book is a collection of interviews with atomic veterans of tests in the Pacific and Nevada. I am grateful to Dr. Grahlfs for agreeing to write the Foreword to my Crossroads memoir.

A lot of work on nuclear politics focuses on the policies and strategies of the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia. This book goes beyond that. The scope of Narang’s Nuclear Strategy is immense. It’s really two books in one. The first tells me why states adopt the nuclear posture—the doctrine and number of weapons—that they do. It’s a one-stop shop for learning about the origins and evolution of nuclear policy in China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, and South Africa. Then I read on and find Narang goes further. The second book shows me the consequences of those decisions for conflict. The lessons of the book travel, and I find myself applying the nuclear posture categories that Narang identifies when thinking about nuclear developments today. 

This book was my introduction to Kurt Vonnegut. I marvel at the author’s genius in bringing together science and religion, two of the most profound subjects known to mankind, in such a playful way.

The unsentimental objectivity of science (and scientists) and a ‘perfect’ religion, whose greatest act of faith is to look at itself with a rather jaundiced eye, join hands to expertly manoeuvre, explain and let chaos be. It is the kind of hilariousness that makes you gaze into space rather than fall out of your chair.

I have always thought that poetry is important to allow prose to not take itself too seriously. Vonnegut has demonstrated how to do this.

A best-selling novelist explains to a fictional niece why, under the shadow of the nuclear bomb we should bother with stuff written before the twentieth century, particularly with the romances of an old maid who never went anywhere. A skilled novelist herself, Weldon vividly depicts the horrors of Austen’s world that equal those of our age—famine, war, childbirth, and medical ignorance. Because she is a novelist, she is good at describing Austen’s mastery of turning social household irritations into art. As a special bonus, she recommends other novelists for readers to enjoy and aspiring novelists to learn from.

This book is an unfinished work, hard to follow, because it is a draft never reviewed by the author and published posthumously.

However, it is a must-read, so please do not be discouraged as I was, for the ideas that it encloses picture a more equalized society practically based on the changing of our economic road, nothing else than ending capitalism as we know it.

Two subjects are of particular interest: first, how to correctly retribute people for the wealth they generate through their work; and second, a demonstration of how excess production and money amassing do not amount to wealth. An interesting lesson in economics.

Do you ever worry about nuclear war? Do you ever think about what would happen if nuclear weapons were actually launched by any of the nine countries that possess them?

I do, and Annie Jacobsen’s new book was the perfect book for me. It’s a thoroughly researched, absolutely gripping second-by-second account of how nuclear war might unfold.

From the first page, I was hooked. This nonfiction thriller grabs you and takes you through a devastatingly plausible scenario where a single nuclear missile launch by North Korea leads to a global nuclear war. The detail is harrowing. The facts read like fiction but are unbearably true. I loved how this book pulls no punches in outlining the nightmare that awaits us if nuclear weapons are ever used.

The concept of life and death after a world war is given a twist when cold and darkness are more lethal than nuclear, chemical, or biological residues. Many of the most prominent characters are civilian airline pilots and other aviation professionals. I’ve spent much of my life around military and civil aviation. I don’t encounter characters like these very frequently. I like the way the author drew upon the knowledge and skills of these people to save humanity’s future.

This novel, inspired by the little-known story of Austrian-born scientist Lise Meitner, is part spy thriller, part love story, part history lesson. And it was so gripping and fast paced that I devoured it in one day.

The story is set in Los Alamo, New Mexico in the 1940s — where J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team of scientists were engaged in an all-stakes race against the Germans to procure the nuclear bomb.

Throughout the book, Eliasberg uses her character, Hannah, to set the record straight about the fact that it was a woman scientist and Austrian Jew who discovered nuclear fission before she was forced to flee Germany to avoid Hitler’s concentration camps. This cinematic story belongs on the big screen right beside the blockbuster Oppenheimer. 

James Burke is a genius who had his own PBS series based on his book, Connections. Right from the get-go, he convinced me that one small malfunction can cripple our entire technologically-based system. This interdependence is typical of almost every aspect of life in the modern world.

Burke made me realize that we live surrounded by objects and systems that we take for granted, but they profoundly affect the way we behave, think, work, play and run our lives and those of our children. If you doubt his assertion, he says, look around you. How many machines could you either build yourself or repair if they stopped working? In my case, practically none.

When you start a car, press the button in an elevator, or buy food in a supermarket, you give no thought to the complex devices or systems that make the car move, the elevator rise, and… show more.

I didn’t have the time or energy for this tome of a book on Harry Truman. Hence, I'd never have read it had it not been ‘assigned’ by the book club I was in.

But I was mesmerized from the first pages. And felt connected to this unobtrusive, somewhat unattractive man who was in every way ordinary. But who became the president during the last days of World War ll. A man who thought and spoke clearly. A man who seemed to personify the virtues without calling them that.

I learned a great deal from this book.