Bøger af Gregg Herken

In the years after World War II, Georgetown's leafy streets were home to an unlikely group of Cold Warriors who helped shape American strategy. This coterie of affluent, well-educated, and connected civilians guided the country, for better and worse, from the Marshall Plan through McCarthyism, Watergate, and Vietnam. The Georgetown set included Phil and Kay Graham, husband-and-wife publishers of The Washington Post; Joe and Stewart Alsop, odd-couple brothers who were among the country's premier political pundits; Frank Wisner, a driven, manic-depressive lawyer in charge of CIA covert operations; and a host of other diplomats, spies, and scholars. Gregg Herken gives us intimate portraits of these dedicated and talented, if deeply flawed, individuals, who navigated the Cold War years (often over cocktails and dinner) with very real consequences reaching into the present day. Throughout, he illuminates the drama and fascination of that noble, congenial, curious old world," in Joe Alsop's words, bringing this remarkable roster of men and women not only out into the open but vividly to life.

Gregg Herken's Brotherhood of the Bomb is the fascinating story of the men who founded the nuclear age, fully told for the first timeThe story of the twentieth century is largely the story of the power of science and technology. Within that story is the incredible tale of the human conflict between Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller-the scientists most responsible for the advent of weapons of mass destruction.How did science-and its practitioners-enlisted in the service of the state during the Second World War, become a slave to its patron during the Cold War? The story of these three men, builders of the bombs, is fundamentally about loyalty-to country, to science, and to each other-and about the wrenching choices that had to be made when these allegiances came into conflict.Gregg Herken gives us the behind-the-scenes account based upon a decade of research, interviews, and newly released Freedom of Information Act and Russian documents. Brotherhood of the Bomb is a vital slice of American history told authoritatively-and grippingly-for the first time.

This book is a history of the complex relations between scientific advisors, primarily physicists, and U.S. presidents in their role as decision makers about nuclear weapons and military strategy.