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"Nuclear weapons Moral and ethical aspects United States."
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Nuclear Forces
What drove Nobel-winning physicist Hans Bethe, head of Theoretical Physics at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, to later renounce the weaponry he had worked so tirelessly to create? That is one of the questions answered by Nuclear Forces, a riveting biography of Bethe’s early life and development as both a scientist and a man of principle.
eBook
Atomic Bill
In Atomic Bill
, Vincent Kiernan examines the fraught career of
New York Times science
journalist, William L. Laurence and shows his professional and
personal lives to be a cautionary tale of dangerous proximity to
power. Laurence was fascinated with atomic science and its
militarization. When the Manhattan Project drew near to perfecting
the atomic bomb, he was recruited to write much of the government's
press materials that were distributed on the day that Hiroshima was
obliterated. That instantly crowned Laurence as one of the leading
journalistic experts on the atomic bomb. As the Cold War dawned,
some assessed Laurence as a propagandist defending the
militarization of atomic energy. For others, he was a skilled
science communicator who provided the public with a deep
understanding of the atomic bomb. Laurence leveraged his perch at
the Times to engage in paid speechmaking, book writing,
filmmaking, and radio broadcasting. His work for the Times declined
in quality even as his relationships with people in power grew
closer and more lucrative. Atomic Bill reveals
extraordinary ethical lapses by Laurence such as a cheating scandal
at Harvard University and plagiarizing from press releases about
atomic bomb tests in the Pacific. In 1963 a conflict of interest
related to the 1964 World's Fair in New York City led to his forced
retirement from the Times . Kiernan shows Laurence to have
set the trend, common among today's journalists of science and
technology, to prioritize gee-whiz coverage of discoveries. That
approach, in which Laurence served the interests of governmental
official and scientists, recommends a full revision of our
understanding of the dawn of the atomic era.
eBook
Almighty : courage, resistance, and existential peril in the nuclear age
\"A riveting, chilling tale of how a group of ragtag activists infiltrated one of the most secure nuclear weapons sites in the United States, told alongside a broader history of America's nuclear stewardship, from the early stages of the Manhattan Project to our country's never-ending investment in nuclear weaponry. On Saturday, July 28, 2012, three senior citizens broke into one of the most secure nuclear weapons facilities in the world. An eighty-two-year-old Catholic nun, a Vietnam veteran, and a house painter infiltrated the Oak Ridge, Tennessee, complex in the dead of night, smearing the walls with human blood and spray-painting quotes from the Bible. Then they waited to be arrested. What was a simple plan--one far more successful than even its perpetrators expected -- spawned a complex discussion. Among the questions that the infiltration raised: How did three unarmed civilians manage to penetrate one of the most heavily guarded locations in the world, nicknamed the 'Fort Knox of Uranium'? Why does the United States continue to possess more nuclear weaponry than is needed to destroy global civilization many times over? And what does this mean for the day-to-day safety of Americans? In Almighty, Washington Post writer Dan Zak begins with the present-day axis of a seventy-year-old story, exploring how events of the twentieth century -- including the prophecies of a farmer-turned-ascetic named John Hendrix and the early stages of the Manhattan Project in Morningside Heights -- led to one of the most successful and high-profile demonstrations of anti-nuclear activism\"--Amazon.com.
Book
The Most Controversial Decision
This book explores the American use of atomic bombs and the role these weapons played in the defeat of the Japanese Empire in World War II. It focuses on President Harry S. Truman's decision-making regarding this most controversial of all his decisions. The book relies on notable archival research and the best and most recent scholarship on the subject to fashion an incisive overview that is fair and forceful in its judgments. This study addresses a subject that has been much debated among historians and it confronts head-on the highly disputed claim that the Truman administration practised 'atomic diplomacy'. The book goes beyond its central historical analysis to ask whether it was morally right for the United States to use these terrible weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also provides a balanced evaluation of the relationship between atomic weapons and the origins of the Cold War.
eBook
Bridging the atomic divide : debating Japan-US attitudes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Harry Wray and Seishiro Sugihara transcend the one-sided Tokyo Trial view of the war in an effort to conduct a balanced exchange on historical perception.This will be of interest equally to both those inside and outside Japan who are perplexed by Japan's \"victimization consciousness.\" Through this impassioned and heartfelt dialogue, Wray.
eBook
Truman and the Hiroshima Cult
The United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 to end World War II as quickly and with as few casualties as possible. That is the compelling and elegantly simple argument Newman puts forward in his new study of World War II's end, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult. According to Newman: (1) The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey conclusions that Japan was ready to surrender without \"the Bomb\" are fraudulent; (2) America’s \"unconditional surrender\" doctrine did not significantly prolong the war; and (3) President Harry S. Truman’s decision to use atomic weapons on Japanese cities was not a \"racist act,\" nor was it a calculated political maneuver to threaten Joseph Stalin’s Eastern hegemony. Simply stated, Newman argues that Truman made a sensible military decision. As commander in chief, he was concerned with ending a devastating and costly war as quickly as possible and with saving millions of lives.
Yet, Newman goes further in his discussion, seeking the reasons why so much hostility has been generated by what happened in the skies over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August, 1945. The source of discontent, he concludes, is a \"cult\" that has grown up in the United States since the 1960s. It was weaned on the disillusionment spawned by concerns about a military industrial complex, American duplicity and failure in the Vietnam War, and a mistrust of government following Watergate. The cult has a shrine, a holy day, a distinctive rhetoric of victimization, various items of scripture, and, in Japan, support from a powerful Marxist constituency. \"As with other cults, it is ahistorical,\" Newman declares. \"Its devotees elevate fugitive and unrepresentative events to cosmic status. And most of all, they believe.\" Newman’s analysis goes to the heart of the process by which scholars interpret historical events and raises disturbing issues about the way historians select and distort evidence about the past to suit special political agendas.
eBook
Abolition of nuclear weapons as a moral imperative
This book advocates for the United States to abolish nuclear weapons, arguing its necessity in terms of the harmful consequences of nuclear deterrence. Kultgen's argument is based on conceptions of human rights and is couched in terms accessible to the disciplines that address human affairs in the social sciences, history, arts, and humanities.
eBook
The British Nuclear Weapons Programme 1952-2002
The first British nuclear weapon test took place in Australia in October 1952. British nuclear weapons have been a source of controversy ever since. In this book, scientists, doctors, researchers and others assess the military value, political impact, health effects and legality of the programme.
eBook