Countdown by Sarah Scoles

Countdown by Sarah Scoles

For fans of Oppenheimer, a riveting investigation into the modern nuclear weapons landscape.

 

Nuclear weapons are, today, as important as they were during the Cold War, and some experts say we could be as close to a nuclear catastrophe now as we were at the height of that conflict. Despite that, conversations about these bombs generally often happen in past tense.



In Countdown, science journalist Sarah Scoles uncovers a different atomic reality: the nuclear age's present.

 

Drawing from years of on-the-ground reporting at the nation's nuclear weapons labs, Scoles interrogates the idea that having nuclear weapons keeps us safe, deterring attacks and preventing radioactive warfare. She deftly assesses the existing nuclear apparatus in the United States, taking readers beyond the news headlines and policy-speak to reveal the state of nuclear-weapons technology, as well as how people currently working within the U.S. nuclear weapons complex have come to think about these bombs and the idea that someone, someday, might use them.

 

Through a sharp, surprising, and undoubtedly urgent narrative, Scoles brings us out of the Cold War and into the twenty-first century, opening readers' eyes to the true nature of nuclear weapons and their caretakers while also giving us the context necessary to understand the consequences of their existence, for worse and for better, for now and for the future.



 

Scoles, Sarah: - Sarah Scoles is a science writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, Smithsonian, the Washington Post, Scientific American, Popular Science, Discover, New Scientist, Aeon, and Wired. A former editor at Astronomy magazine, Scoles worked at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the location of the first-ever SETI project. She lives in Denver, Colorado.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781645030058
ISBN 10	1645030059
Title	Countdown
Author	Sarah Scoles
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Bold Type Books
Year published	2024-02-29
Number of pages	272
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.