Doomsday Men: The Real Dr. Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.89 (682 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 031237397X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 576 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-11-03 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Strangelove. In 1950, Hungarian-born scientist Leo Szilard made a dramatic announcement on American radio: science was on the verge of creating a doomsday bomb. However, it remained a terrifying possibility, striking fear into the hearts of people around the world. This is the gripping, untold story of the doomsday bomb—the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. The scientific creators of such apocalyptic weapons had transformed the laws of nature into instruments of mass destruction and for many people in the Cold War there was little to distinguish real scientists from that “fictional master of megadeath,” Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. For the first time in history, mankind realized that he had within his grasp a truly God-like power, the ability to destroy life itself. The shockwave from this statement reverberated across the following decade and beyond. This is a story that cannot be told without the iconic films and fictions that portray our deadly fascination with superweapons, from H.G. The story of the cobalt bomb is an unwritten chapter of the Cold War, but now PD Smith reveals the personalities behind this feared technology and shows how the scientists responsible for the twentieth century’s most terrible weapons grew up in a cult
"Out of the libraries come the killers." - - Bertolt Brecht, "19"Out of the libraries come the killers." - - Bertolt Brecht, "1940" Found Highways In Brecht's "1940," the "latest inventions of the professors" probably didn't include the atomic bomb. Poison gas and rockets meant to kill civilians were horrific enough. But one of the surprising things (to me, at least) that P. D. Smith's Doomsday Men shows is how newspapers and popular science writing in Europe and America described atomic bombs and atomic power plants in detail decades before Hiroshima.Another interesting thing in Doomsday Men is how fiction writers and scientists inspired each other. Roentgen discovered X-rays in 1895 and the next year H. G. Wells used "Roentgen vibrations" as the rationale fo. 0" In Brecht's "19"Out of the libraries come the killers." - - Bertolt Brecht, "1940" Found Highways In Brecht's "1940," the "latest inventions of the professors" probably didn't include the atomic bomb. Poison gas and rockets meant to kill civilians were horrific enough. But one of the surprising things (to me, at least) that P. D. Smith's Doomsday Men shows is how newspapers and popular science writing in Europe and America described atomic bombs and atomic power plants in detail decades before Hiroshima.Another interesting thing in Doomsday Men is how fiction writers and scientists inspired each other. Roentgen discovered X-rays in 1895 and the next year H. G. Wells used "Roentgen vibrations" as the rationale fo. 0," the "latest inventions of the professors" probably didn't include the atomic bomb. Poison gas and rockets meant to kill civilians were horrific enough. But one of the surprising things (to me, at least) that P. D. Smith's Doomsday Men shows is how newspapers and popular science writing in Europe and America described atomic bombs and atomic power plants in detail decades before Hiroshima.Another interesting thing in Doomsday Men is how fiction writers and scientists inspired each other. Roentgen discovered X-rays in 1895 and the next year H. G. Wells used "Roentgen vibrations" as the rationale fo. Completely captivating Twilight Princess Completely captivating from the first page, this book never ceases to surprise and enchant. A picturesque stroll through the interwoven history of science and fiction, I learned a lot about both while being thoroughly entertained. The cross-pollination between imagination and science has been more fruitful than I knew, and I definitely view the world differently since reading this book.Old enough to have done bomb drills in my early school days, but too young to have taken them very seriously, fear of nuclear annihilation was only on the outer fringes of my consciousness. I wonder what it would have been like to gro. "Could not put down!" according to Laz. Since I was young, I've always been fascinated by the Cold War so this book instantly caught my eye. P.D. Smith starts from discovery of the first radioactive elements all the way to the development of the hydrogen bomb. The insight given to historical figures in the nuclear arms race is extraordinarily interesting and I'm happy that some chemistry and physics is thrown in as well. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the development of nuclear weapons, the theories behind the Cold War, or the reasoning for the creation of such terrible weapons in the minds of scientists. Overall the book is well writ
Explaining "why some of the most gifted and idealistic men of the twentieth century spent so much effort trying to destroy the planet," Smith's dynamic, riveting narrative reveals details of people, places and events that are rarely covered in textbooks, bringing to life not just scientists like Robert Oppenheimer and Leo Szilard, but the horrors of chemical and atomic warfare. Time and again, "it seemed that a giant leap forward for science also meant a step backward for mankind," and contemporary film and fiction echoed this sentiment with "clear signs of genuine resentment towards scientists for betraying the high ide