Virtual Lobby Display: The Atomic Age

The US decision to drop an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 remains one of the most controversial events of the twentieth century. As this fascinating new history shows, the bomb dropped by a U.S. pilot that hot August morning in 1945 was in many ways the world's offspring, in both a technological and a moral sense.

Since their inception, nuclear weapons have multiplied at an alarming rate, leaving everyone from policymakers to concerned citizens wondering what it will take to slow, stop, or even reverse their spread. With clarity and expertise, Joseph Cirincione presents an even-handed look at the history of nuclear proliferation and an optimistic vision of its future, providing a comprehensive survey of the wide range of critical perspectives.

Do alliances curb efforts by states to develop nuclear weapons? Atomic Assurance looks at what makes alliances sufficiently credible to prevent nuclear proliferation; how alliances can break down and so encourage nuclear proliferation; and whether security guarantors like the United States can use alliance ties to end the nuclear efforts of their allies.

Paul Ozorak describes when and where underground shelters were built, and records what has become of them. He explains how they would have been used if a nuclear war had broken out, and in the case of weapons bases, he shows how these weapons would have been deployed.

In March 1983, Ronald Reagan made one of the most controversial announcements of his presidency when he called on the nation's scientists and engineers to develop a defensive shield so impenetrable as to make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete."

This book tells the remarkable story of how the quiet, conservative residents of a small, poor Nebraska community refused to be seduced by the oratory of the people than run this country, or by the offer of $3 million a year for 40 years - and tenaciously fought the powers-that-be against locating a "low-level" nuclear waste dump site in its "backyard."

Poison in the Well provides a balanced look at the policy decisions, scientific conflicts, public relations strategies, and the myriad mishaps and subsequent cover-ups that were born out of the dilemma of where to house deadly nuclear materials.

A history of the Nuclear Weapons Complex, a nationwide group of government-owned and contractor-operated labs and production plants.

A Nuclear Refrain is a spatial fiction that critiques the policy of nuclear deterrence, the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, and the UK’s decision to replace its Vanguard submarines. The book considers the issues from less familiar perspectives: The emotional and embodied, empire and the establishment, and the impact on democratic potentialities.

The author reviews the history of nuclear deterrence and calls for a renewed effort to address the relevance of concepts such as first strike, escalation, and other Cold War-era strategies in today's world of additional superpowers, smaller nuclear powers, and nonstate actors.

Ranging across novels and poetry, critical theory and film, comics and speeches, Race, Ethnicity and Nuclear War: Representations of Nuclear Weapons and Post-Apocalyptic Worlds explores how writers, thinkers, and filmmakers have answered the following question: Are nuclear weapons "white?"