AN EPIC RACE FOR ARMS POWER AND SURVIVAL PLOKHY,SERHII creator PLOKHY,SURHII text UK PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE 2025 monographic eng 422P. On 16 July 1945, the Nuclear Age began with the explosion of the first atomic bomb and the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer: 'Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.' While the threat of mutually assured destruction kept a lid on a simmering and tense geopolitical landscape, events like the Chernobyl disaster and near-misses like the Cuban Missile Crisis showed that total destruction was only ever one malfunction, mistake, or miscommunication away. Now, as governments re-arm their nuclear arsenals, treaties designed to limit the acquisition and use of nuclear weapons fall away, and nuclear weapons come increasingly within reach of non-state actors, we are on the brink of a renaissance of the nuclear industry. In The Nuclear Age, acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy paints an intricate picture of a world governed by fear. From the first artificial splitting of the atom in 1917 and the race to create the first atomic bomb in World War II, through the fraught arms race of the Cold War, to the imperialism, neo-colonial motivation and wars being waged today, the threat posed by nuclear weapons is as pertinent as ever. 1. Prophecy 7 2. Fright 16 3. Nazis and Their Friends 28 4. Transatlantic Alliance 40 5. Manhattan Project 52 6. Unequal Partners 65 7. American Bomb 79 8. Stolen Secret 93 9. United Nations 105 10. Union Jack 117 11. Stalin’s Bomb 131 12. British Hurricane 143 13. Managing Fear 155 14. Super Bomb 168 15. Missile Gap 181 16. Bombe Atomique Copyrighted Material 195 viiiContents 17. China Syndrome 206 18. Cuban Gamble 218 19. Banning the Bomb 229 20. Star of David 243 21. MAD Men 256 22. Smiling Buddha 270 23. Star Wars 283 24. The Fall of the Nuclear Colossus 296 25. Giving Up the Bomb 310 26. The Return of Fear 326 27. Preemptive War 340 BY SERHII PLOKHY IN ENGLISH NON FICTION MILITARY HISTORY INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS COLD WAR HISTORY 327.1747 PLO/N 9780241582862 20260605102059.0