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The Bomb

Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War

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The Bomb

By: Fred Kaplan
Narrated by: Edward Bauer
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From the author of the classic The Wizards of Armageddon and Pulitzer Prize finalist comes the definitive history of American policy on nuclear war—and several presidents’ actions in nuclear crises—from Truman to Trump.

Fred Kaplan, hailed by The New York Times as “a rare combination of defense intellectual and pugnacious reporter,” takes us into the White House Situation Room, the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s “Tank” in the Pentagon, and the vast chambers of Strategic Command to bring us the untold stories—based on exclusive interviews and previously classified documents—of how America’s presidents and generals have thought about, threatened, broached, and just barely avoided nuclear war from the dawn of the atomic age until today.

Kaplan’s historical research and deep reporting will stand as the permanent record of politics, the military history of nuclear weapons, and the struggles within the Department of Defense and the Pentagon strategies. Discussing theories that have dominated nightmare scenarios from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Kaplan presents the unthinkable in terms of mass destruction and demonstrates how the nuclear war reality will not go away, regardless of the dire consequences. Military Military Policy Nuclear War Politics & Government Weapons & Warfare War American Foreign Policy Vietnam War Socialism Nuclear Weapons
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This book clearly demonstrates how a rational understanding of the present is impossible without knowledge of history.

The most important book you can read today

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Really liked the chronologically moving (with revealing flasbacks ) through presidents and presidential attitudes to nuclear war. And the pains taken to sift through personalities and protocols.

Thoroughly researched and engagingly written.

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