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Downwindis an unflinching tale of the atomic West that reveals the intentional disregard for human and animal life through nuclear testing by the federal government and uranium extraction by mining corporations during and after the Cold War. Sarah Alisabeth Fox highlights the personal cost of nuclear testing and uranium extraction in the American West through extensive interviews with \"downwinders,\" the Native American and non-Native residents of the Great Basin region affected by nuclear environmental contamination and nuclear-testing fallout. These downwinders tell tales of communities ravaged by cancer epidemics, farmers and ranchers economically ruined by massive crop and animal deaths, and Native miners working in dangerous conditions without proper safety equipment so that the government could surreptitiously study the effects of radiation on humans. In chilling detailDownwindbrings to light the stories and concerns of these groups whose voices have been silenced and marginalized for decades in the name of \"patriotism\" and \"national security.\" With the renewed boom in mining in the American West, Fox's look at this hidden history, unearthed from years of field interviews, archival research, and epidemiological studies, is a must-read for every American concerned about the fate of our western lands and communities.

In a bold reappraisal, Katherine Epstein uncovers the origins of the \"military-industrial complex\" not in the Cold War but in the decades before WWI, as the United States and Great Britain struggled to perfect a crucial new weapon: the self-propelled torpedo. Torpedo R&D sparked intellectual property battles that reshaped national security law.

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.

Following the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax letters that appeared in their wake, the threat posed by the widespread accessibility of chemical and biological weapons has continually been used to stir public fear and opinion by politicians and the media alike. In Chemical and Biological Weapons, Edward M. Spiers cuts through the scare tactics and hype to provide a thorough and even-handed examination of the weapons themselves—the various types and effects—and their evolution from World War I to the present. Spiers describes the similarities and differences between the two types of weapons and how technological advancements have led to tactical innovations in their use over time. As well, he gives equal attention to the international response to the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons, analyzing global efforts aimed at restraining their use, such as deterrence and disarmament, and the effectiveness of these approaches in the twentieth century. Using Iraq as a case study, Spiers also investigates its deployment of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War and the attempts by the international community to disarm Iraq through the United Nations Special Commission and the United States-led war in 2003. A timely and balanced historical survey, Chemical and Biological Weapons will be of interest to readers studying the proliferation and use of chemical and biological warfare and the reactions of the international community throughout the last several decades.

The first comprehensive technical history of air, land, sea, and underwater unmanned systems, by a distinguished U.S. Navy roboticist.Military drones have recently been hailed as a revolutionary new technology that will forever change the conduct of war. And yet the United States and other countries have been deploying such unmanned military systems for more than a century. Written by a renowned authority in the field, this book documents the forgotten legacy of these pioneering efforts, offering the first comprehensive historical and technical accounting of unmanned air, land, sea, and underwater systems. Focusing on examples introduced during the two world wars, H. R. Everett meticulously traces their development from the mid-nineteenth century to the early Cold War. A pioneering Navy roboticist, Everett not only describes these systems in detail but also reverse-engineers the designs in order to explain how they operated in real-world conditions of the time. More than 500 illustrations-photographs, drawings, and plans, many of them never before published-accompany the text.Everett covers the evolution of early wire-guided submersibles, tracing the development of power, propulsion, communication, and control; radio-controlled surface craft, deployed by both Germany and Great Britain in World War I; radio-controlled submersibles; radio-controlled aircraft, including the TDR-1 assault drone project in World War II-which laid the groundwork for subsequent highly classified drone programs; and remote-controlled ground vehicles, including the Wehrmacht's Goliath and Borgward demolition carriers.

Gifts from the Thunder Beingsexamines North American Aboriginal peoples' use of Indigenous and European distance weapons in big-game hunting and combat. Beyond the capabilities of European weapons, Aboriginal peoples' ways of adapting and using this technology in combination with Indigenous weaponry contributed greatly to the impact these weapons had on Aboriginal cultures. This gradual transition took place from the beginning of the fur trade in the Hudson's Bay Company trading territory to the treaty and reserve period that began in Canada in the 1870s. Technological change and the effects of European contact were not uniform throughout North America, as Roland Bohr illustrates by comparing the northern Great Plains and the Central Subarctic-two adjacent but environmentally different regions of North America-and their respective Indigenous cultures. Beginning with a brief survey of the subarctic and Northern Plains environments and the most common subsistence strategies in these regions around the time of contact, Bohr provides the context for a detailed examination of social, spiritual, and cultural aspects of bows, arrows, quivers, and firearms. His detailed analysis of the shifting usage of bows and arrows and firearms in the northern Great Plains and the Central Subarctic makesGifts from the Thunder Beingsan important addition to the canon of North American ethnology.

After World War II, an atomic hierarchy emerged in the noncommunist world.Washington was at the top, followed over time by its NATO allies and then Israel, with the postcolonial world completely shut out.An Indian diplomat called the system \"nuclear apartheid.\" Drawing on recently declassified sources from U.S.

Since the first atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima, the history of nuclear warfare has been tangled with the spaces and places of scientific research and weapons testing, armament and disarmament, pacifism and proliferation. Nuclear geography gives us the tools to understand these events, and the extraordinary human cost of nuclear weapons. Disarming Doomsday explores the secret history of nuclear weapons by studying the places they build and tear apart, from Los Alamos to Hiroshima. It looks at the legacy of nuclear imperialism from weapons testing on Christmas Island and across the South Pacific, as well as the lasting harm this has caused to indigenous communities and the soldiers that conducted the tests. For the first time, these complex geographies are tied together. Disarming Doomsday takes us forward, describing how geographers and geotechnology continue to shape nuclear war, and, perhaps, help to prevent it.

Between 1945 and 1950, the United States had a global nuclear monopoly. The A-bomb transformed the nation's strategic airpower and saw the Air Force displace the Navy at the front line of American defense. InTo Kill Nations, Edward Kaplan traces the evolution of American strategic airpower and preparation for nuclear war from this early air-atomic era to a later period (1950-1965) in which the Soviet Union's atomic capability, accelerated by thermonuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, made American strategic assets vulnerable and gradually undermined air-atomic strategy. The shift to mutually assured destruction (MAD) via general nuclear exchange steadily took precedence in strategic thinking and budget allocations. Soon American nuclear-armed airborne bomber fleets shaped for conventionally defined-if implausible, then impossible-victory were supplanted by missile-based forces designed to survive and punish. The Air Force receded from the forefront of American security policy. Kaplan throws into question both the inevitability and preferability of the strategic doctrine of MAD. He looks at the process by which cultural, institutional, and strategic ideas about MAD took shape and makes insightful use of the comparison between generals who thought they could win a nuclear war and the cold institutional logic of the suicide pact that was MAD. Kaplan also offers a reappraisal of Eisenhower's nuclear strategy and diplomacy to make a case for the marginal viability of air-atomic military power even in an era of ballistic missiles.

The history of biological weapons (BW), chemical weapons (CW), and nuclear weapons is complicated. It can be disturbing, tragic, and occasionally encouraging. It is rarely amusing, although the names selected for certain weapons suggest a casualness toward the consequences of their use: Atomic Annie, Blue Peacock, Dew of Death, Fat Man, Flying cow, George, Gilda, Helen of Bikini, Hurricane, Katie, Little Boy, Lulu, Mike, Red Beard, Sewer Pipe, Squirt. Use of BW and CW in warfare has produced mixed results in terms of effecting the outcome of a battle or campaign; despite this mixed record, both weapon types have attracted intense interest and strong advocacy for further use. The sole experience with use of nuclear weapons in warfare is viewed as hastening surrender by Japan, created competition among nations to develop more such weapons, and influenced efforts to ban any use or even stockpiling of such weapons. Each of these three weapon types has its own peculiar history, as recounted in this dictionary. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Warfare contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries onterms related to NBC warfare, ranging from basic descriptions of substances used to details on incidents and episodes where NBC weapons were used, historical events, persons important to NBC warfare, countries where such weapons have been developed or used, and international treaties and treaty-related organizations.