The Nuclear Age: An Epic Race for Arms, Power and Survival

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, non-proliferation treaties 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 motives and wars of today, the threat posed by nuclear weapons is as pertinent as ever.

As he examines the motivations of key players, Plokhy confronts the crucial question of our age: what can we learn from the first nuclear arms race that can help us to stop the new one?