Nuclear Weapons
What You Need to Know

Nuclear Weapons is designed to give a layperson an understanding of both the history and technology of nuclear weapons.

Jeremy Bernstein (Author)

9780521126373, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 8 February 2010

316 pages
22.2 x 14.6 x 1.8 cm, 0.4 kg

"Jeremy Bernstein's Nuclear Weapons: What You Need to Know delivers as advertised, arming the reader with sufficent historical and technical background to engage contemporary journalism on nuclear weapons or to begin more in-depth study of the histories of science, the Cold War, and related topics." -Edward H. Jeter, World History Bulletin

This book is a history of nuclear weapons. From their initial theoretical development at the start of the twentieth century to the recent tests in North Korea, Jeremy Bernstein seeks to describe the basic science of nuclear weaponry at each point in the narrative. At the same time, he offers accounts and anecdotes of the personalities involved, many of whom he has known firsthand. Dr Bernstein writes in response to what he sees as a widespread misunderstanding throughout the media and hence among the general public of the basic workings and potential impact of nuclear weaponry. For example, he points out that it has been nearly thirty years since anyone has even seen a nuclear detonation. Likewise, the Nagasaki bomb, primitive when compared to more modern devices, generated an explosion roughly the equivalent of eight thousand copies of the truck bomb used by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City.

1. The nucleus
2. Neutrons
3. Fissions
4. Chain reactions
5. MAUD
6. Eka-Osmium
7. Serber's primer
8. The 'gadget'
9. Smoky and the need to know
10. Fusion
11. Spies
12. Proliferation.

Subject Areas: Physics [PH], History of science [PDX]