The Twilight of the Bombs

This culminating volume in Richard Rhodes’s monumental and prizewinning history of nuclear weapons offers the first comprehensive narrative of post–Cold War nuclear challenges. It examines the nuclear turning point the present day represents and casts a hopeful eye to the future.With his extraordinary depth of knowledge and understanding, Rhodes makes clear how the five original nuclear powers—Russia, Great Britain, France, China, and especially the United States—have struggled with new realities. He shows us how the stage was set for a second tragic war when Iraq secretly destroyed its nuclear infrastructure and reveals the real reasons George W. Bush chose to fight a second ground war. We see how the efforts of U.S. weapons labs laid the groundwork for nuclear disarmament in the former Soviet Union; how and why South Africa secretly built and then destroyed a small nuclear arsenal; how Jimmy Carter’s private diplomacy prevented another Korean War. Rhodes assesses the emerging threat of nuclear terrorism and our complicated relationships with North Korea and South Asia. Finally, he imagines what a postnuclear world might look like, and what might make it possible.Powerful and persuasive—an essential work of contemporary history.