Try free for 30 days
-
Arsenals of Folly
- The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $26.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also picked
-
The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy
- New, Updated and Completely Revised
- By: Lawrence Freedman, Jeffrey Michaels
- Narrated by: Richard Elwood
- Length: 24 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1981, Lawrence Freedman's The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy was immediately acclaimed as the standard work on the history of attempts to cope militarily and politically with the terrible destructive power of nuclear weapons. It has now been completely rewritten, drawing on a wide range of new research, and updated to take account of the period following the end of the cold war, covering all nuclear powers.
-
Embers of War
- The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam
- By: Fredrik Logevall
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 32 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this landmark work that will forever change your understanding of how and why America went to war in Vietnam, author Fredrik Logevall taps newly accessible diplomatic archives in several nations and traces the path that led two Western nations to tragically lose their way in the jungles of Southeast Asia. He brings to life the bloodiest battles of France’s final years in Indochina - and describes how, from an early point, a succession of American leaders made disastrous policy choices that put America on its own collision course with history.
-
-
brilliant!
- By Anonymous User on 04-05-2022
-
Energy
- A Human History
- By: Richard Rhodes
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Through an unforgettable cast of characters, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes explains how wood gave way to coal and coal made room for oil, as we now turn to natural gas, nuclear power, and renewable energy. Rhodes looks back on five centuries of progress, through such influential figures as Queen Elizabeth I, King James I, Benjamin Franklin, Herman Melville, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford.
-
-
Excellent book but please spare us the accents!
- By Pierz Newton-John on 12-07-2018
-
The Button
- The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump
- By: William J. Perry, Tom Z. Collina
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written in an accessible and authoritative voice, The Button reveals the shocking tales and sobering facts of nuclear executive authority throughout the atomic age, delivering a powerful condemnation against ever leaving explosive power this devastating under any one person's thumb.
-
Leveraging Latency
- How the Weak Compel the Strong with Nuclear Technology
- By: Tristan A. Volpe
- Narrated by: Paul Brion
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Leveraging Latency, Tristan A. Volpe argues that having greater capacity to build weaponry doesn't translate to greater coercive advantage. Volpe finds that there is a trade-off between threatening proliferation and promising nuclear restraint. States need just enough bomb-making capacity to threaten proliferation, but not so much that it becomes too difficult for them to offer nonproliferation assurances. The boundaries of this sweet spot align with the capacity to produce the fissile material at the heart of an atomic weapon.
-
The Doomsday Machine
- By: Daniel Ellsberg
- Narrated by: Steven Cooper
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Doomsday Machine is Ellsberg's hair-raising insider's account of the most dangerous arms buildup in the history of civilization, whose legacy - and renewal under the Obama administration - threatens the very survival of humanity. It is scarcely possible to estimate the true dangers of our present nuclear policies without penetrating the secret realities of the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years, when Ellsberg had high-level access to them.
-
-
Frightening
- By JayD on 07-12-2022
-
The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy
- New, Updated and Completely Revised
- By: Lawrence Freedman, Jeffrey Michaels
- Narrated by: Richard Elwood
- Length: 24 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1981, Lawrence Freedman's The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy was immediately acclaimed as the standard work on the history of attempts to cope militarily and politically with the terrible destructive power of nuclear weapons. It has now been completely rewritten, drawing on a wide range of new research, and updated to take account of the period following the end of the cold war, covering all nuclear powers.
-
Embers of War
- The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam
- By: Fredrik Logevall
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 32 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this landmark work that will forever change your understanding of how and why America went to war in Vietnam, author Fredrik Logevall taps newly accessible diplomatic archives in several nations and traces the path that led two Western nations to tragically lose their way in the jungles of Southeast Asia. He brings to life the bloodiest battles of France’s final years in Indochina - and describes how, from an early point, a succession of American leaders made disastrous policy choices that put America on its own collision course with history.
-
-
brilliant!
- By Anonymous User on 04-05-2022
-
Energy
- A Human History
- By: Richard Rhodes
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Through an unforgettable cast of characters, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes explains how wood gave way to coal and coal made room for oil, as we now turn to natural gas, nuclear power, and renewable energy. Rhodes looks back on five centuries of progress, through such influential figures as Queen Elizabeth I, King James I, Benjamin Franklin, Herman Melville, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford.
-
-
Excellent book but please spare us the accents!
- By Pierz Newton-John on 12-07-2018
-
The Button
- The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump
- By: William J. Perry, Tom Z. Collina
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written in an accessible and authoritative voice, The Button reveals the shocking tales and sobering facts of nuclear executive authority throughout the atomic age, delivering a powerful condemnation against ever leaving explosive power this devastating under any one person's thumb.
-
Leveraging Latency
- How the Weak Compel the Strong with Nuclear Technology
- By: Tristan A. Volpe
- Narrated by: Paul Brion
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Leveraging Latency, Tristan A. Volpe argues that having greater capacity to build weaponry doesn't translate to greater coercive advantage. Volpe finds that there is a trade-off between threatening proliferation and promising nuclear restraint. States need just enough bomb-making capacity to threaten proliferation, but not so much that it becomes too difficult for them to offer nonproliferation assurances. The boundaries of this sweet spot align with the capacity to produce the fissile material at the heart of an atomic weapon.
-
The Doomsday Machine
- By: Daniel Ellsberg
- Narrated by: Steven Cooper
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Doomsday Machine is Ellsberg's hair-raising insider's account of the most dangerous arms buildup in the history of civilization, whose legacy - and renewal under the Obama administration - threatens the very survival of humanity. It is scarcely possible to estimate the true dangers of our present nuclear policies without penetrating the secret realities of the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years, when Ellsberg had high-level access to them.
-
-
Frightening
- By JayD on 07-12-2022
Publisher's Summary
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb: the story of the entire postwar superpower arms race, climaxing during the Reagan-Gorbachev decade when the United States and the Soviet Union came within scant hours of nuclear war - and then nearly agreed to abolish nuclear weapons. In a narrative that moves like a thriller, Rhodes sheds light on the Reagan administration’s unprecedented arms buildup in the early 1980s, as well as the arms-reduction campaign that followed, and Reagan’s famous 1986 summit meeting with Gorbachev.
Rhodes’s detailed exploration of events of this time constitutes a prehistory of the neoconservatives, demonstrating that the manipulation of government and public opinion with fake intelligence and threat inflation that the administration of George W. Bush has used to justify the current “war on terror” and the disastrous invasion of Iraq were developed and applied in the Reagan era and even before. Drawing on personal interviews with both Soviet and U.S. participants, and on a wealth of new documentation, memoir literature, and oral history that has become available only in the past 10 years, Rhodes recounts what actually happened in the final years of the Cold War that led to its dramatic end.
The story is new, compelling, and continually surprising - a revelatory re-creation of a hugely important era of our recent history.
Critic Reviews
"The clarity of the historical record reinforces Rhodes' fiercely held political convictions." (Publishers Weekly)
“Throughout his assiduously researched work, Rhodes cites stunning statistics to support his contention that the nuclear competition has run amok...dense with crucial, revealing information obtained from personal interviews and newly declassified documents, Rhodes’s Arsenals of Folly is a dramatic and penetrating investigation of the nuclear arms race and its eventual end.” (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
“Every age finds the writers it needs, and the nuclear age has found Richard Rhodes.” (The Nation)