Critic Reviews
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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. 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.
Slate's War Stories columnist, sometimes jazz critic; author of The Bomb, Dark Territory, The Insurgents, 1959, Daydream Believers, The Wizards of Armageddon.
@gtotango And don’t miss my 2020 sequel of sorts, “The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War.”
Defence editor at @TheEconomist, Visiting fellow at @warstudies King's College London.
I had no idea John Foster Dulles had offered France a pair of tactical nuclear weapons for use at Dien Bien Phu. (from Fred Kaplan’s “The Bomb”) https://t.co/NowYSVyJPR
Co-Host, Editor of WNYC's On the Media, author of "The Influencing Machine" and "The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic" and so on.
See me interview the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and husband @fmkaplan on his crucial and “surprisingly entertaining”(NYT) new book THE BOMB, Thursday 7pm @CommunityBkstr !