(Not surprisingly, the Manhattan project was also at the cutting edge of budget and schedule overruns, at 1,500% and 200% respectively.) It’s also a pretty good primer on physics in the first half of the 20th century and the management of a major project at the absolute cutting edge of science and technology.

It should be on the reading list of anyone who wants to understand how pure scientific research translated into the destructive force that drove the Cold War dynamic-albeit only through a prodigious industrial and intellectual effort. Written by Richard Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly was published in 2007 and was the third in Rhodes’ ‘doomsday trilogy’ about nuclear weapons, following books on the atomic bombs of WWII and the hydrogen bomb of the 1950s.Īnd if you haven’t read it, his previous The making of the atomic bomb is one of the best non-fiction books I’ve read. (Yes, there was such a thing, and if you haven’t heard this story before, be ready to be surprised by just how dire the situation became.) Later today The Strategist will publish an extract from that paper, and we’ll follow up tomorrow with some reflections on the danger of ignoring nuclear weapons in our current strategic assessments and planning.Īfter reading Paul’s paper, I went to my bookshelf and pulled down what I think is a pretty good single volume on the evolution of the American and Soviet Cold War nuclear arsenals. Tomorrow ASPI will publish a short paper by Professor Paul Dibb which describes the 1983 nuclear war scare.

Arsenals of Folly: the making of the nuclear arms race (2007) and The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), by Richard Rhodes.

Arsenals of Folly by Richard Rhodes