The reasons we thought we had for building such an arsenal were never really clear.
Click play to listen. Recorded on November 8, 2008.
A big idea: E=mc2. An equally big outcome: the six-decade (and counting) global nuclear arms race, with Richard Rhodes as its Edward Gibbon. With his recent Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race (2008), which examined the superpower standoff during the Cold War’s final years, the prolific author has now completed the trilogy on nuclear weaponry that began with the prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986). His straightforward lecture reviewed the events of the nuclear arms race with a focus on the Reagan era to the present. Rhodes shed valuable insight on Mikahail Gorbachev’s biography, and highlights the opportunities toward disarmament that Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush let slip by.
Kennette Benedict
interviews Rhodes.
