Weapon History

In Bomb Power, Garry Wills reveals how the atomic bomb transformed our nation down to its deepest constitutional roots - by dramatically increasing the power of the modern presidency and redefining the government as a national security state---in ways still felt today. A masterful reckoning from one of America's preeminent historians, Bomb Power draws a direct line from the Manhattan Project to the usurpations of George W. Bush.

Based on years of forensic archaeology combined with interviews of more than two hundred survivors and their families, Ghosts of Hiroshima is a you-are-there account of ordinary human beings thrust into extraordinary events, during which our modern civilization entered its most challenging phase—a nuclear adolescence that, unless we are very wise and learn from our past, we may not

In 1915, when German forces executed the first successful gas attack of World War I, the world watched in horror as the boundaries of warfare were forever changed. Cries of barbarianism rang throughout Europe, yet Allied nations immediately jumped into the fray, kickstarting an arms race that would redefine a war already steeped in unimaginable horror. Largely forgotten in the confines of history, the development of the US Chemical Warfare Service in 1917 left an indelible imprint on World War I.

In November 1944, the U.S. Navy fleet lay at anchor in Ulithi Harbor, deep in the Pacific Ocean, when the oiler USS Mississinewa erupted in a ball of flames. Japan's secret weapon, the Kaiten - a manned suicide submarine - had succeeded in its first mission. The Kaiten was so secret that even Japanese naval commanders didn't know of its existence. And the Americans kept it secret as well. Embarrassed by the shocking surprise attack, the U.S. Navy refused to salvage or inspect the sunken Mighty Miss.

Tens of millions died during World War II as the warring powers raced to create the best fighter planes, tanks, and guns, and eventually that race extended to bombs which carried enough power to destroy civilization itself. While the war raged in Europe and the Pacific, a dream team of Nobel Laureates was working on the Manhattan Project, a program kept so secret that Vice President Harry Truman didn’t know about it until he took the presidency after FDR’s death in April 1945.

Again and again, American taxpayers are asked to open their wallets and pay for a national security machine that costs $1.25 trillion operate. How is it possible that the United States Government gets it so wrong on so many critical issues, and so often? And if our expensive national security machine is not working, what can be done?

In February 1945, 350 American POWs captured earlier at the Battle of the Bulge or elsewhere in Europe were singled out by the Nazis because they were Jews or were thought to resemble Jews. They were transported in cattle cars to Berga, a concentration camp in eastern Germany, and put to work as slave laborers, mining tunnels for a planned underground synthetic-fuel factory. This was the only incident of its kind during World War II.

The Army's need: An automatic pistol with the stopping power of the .45 caliber Colt single action Army revolver. Colt and John Browning collaborated to meet the Army's need. The result was the greatest combat pistol ever designed. This book examines why the Army insisted on .45 caliber, the innovation required to meet that requirement, and how the model of 1911 beat the competition in reliability, function, and feel.

April 12, 1945. Less than three months into his vice presidency, Harry Truman is catapulted into the Oval Office following the sudden death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. As he recites the oath, he learns a chilling secret known only to a select few: the United States is on the verge of deploying a weapon of unimaginable power. This weapon could end the war, but also herald a new age of global fear and uncertainty.

The Book-3 of the series takes-off at the onset of the 1970s decade, when, after having developed deployed thousands of ICBMs & SLBMs armed to the teeth with megaton-class thermonuclear warheads, both the U.S. as well as the U.S.S.R; were faced with the urgent need to invest billions of dollars towards the development & nationwide deployment of Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Systems to protect themselves against each other's ICBMs & SLBMs. The Soviets, incredibly, had deployed around 1,000 heavy ICBMs hosting a massive & insane 6,000+ megatons worth of thermonuclear warheads, collectively ...

Americans have always loved guns. This special bond was forged during the American Revolution and sanctified by the Second Amendment. It is because of this exceptional relationship that American civilians are more heavily armed than the citizens of any other nation. Or so we're told. In The Gunning of America, historian Pamela Haag overturns this conventional wisdom. American gun culture, she argues, developed not because the gun was exceptional but precisely because it was not.

On July 16, 1945, the 'Trinity' Test effectively brought about the transformation of the ‘American Prometheus’ into the ‘Destroyer of Worlds’ along with an expedited dawn of the nuclear age as the Laws of Physics were successfully reappraised by the Homo Sapiens. However, the initial premise and the hopeful promise of the creation of a ‘Super Weapon’ to end all wars has remained more or less a chimera for humanity even after 7+ decades of its genesis. The dawn of the nuclear age; following Trinity and the subsequent atomic bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki; unleashed the Cold War-...

As award-winning biographer and science writer Graham Farmelo describes in Churchill's Bomb, the British set out to investigate the possibility of building nuclear weapons before their American colleagues. But when scientists in Britain first discovered a way to build an atomic bomb, Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not make the most of his country's lead and was slow to realize the bomb's strategic implications.

Smallpox, the only infectious disease to have been eradicated, was one of the most terrifying of human scourges. It covered the skin with hideous, painful boils, killed a third of its victims, and left the survivors disfigured for life. In this riveting, often terrifying look at the history of smallpox, Jonathan B. Tucker tells the story of this deadly disease, the heroic efforts to eradicate it worldwide, and the looming dangers it still poses today.

Who’s really to blame for America’s catastrophic financial meltdown and devastating national recession? Contrary to what the “Occupy Movement” might tell you, it’s not greedy Wall Street executives. No, as one of America’s top financial professionals reveals in this shocking book, the real culprit is economic warfare, with our foreign enemies exploiting our lurking financial weaknesses. In Secret Weapon, Kevin Freeman unveils how all the evidence - including motive, means, and opportunity - points to America’s foreign enemies deliberately pushing our economy over the brink.

The American way of war is enabled by the concept of massing all available firepower—when done correctly it makes US forces hard to beat. However improvised explosive devices have increasingly enabled a new kind of asymmetric warfare, one that conventional forces continue to struggle to counter. This book offers a "counter-IED playbook," one based upon the author's experiences of over ninety months of combat operations, working the problem sets of Fires, Effects, IEDs, Close Target Reconnaissance, Tracking-Tagging-Locating (TTL), and Information Operations.

Robert Oppenheimer had a lot resting on his shoulders. During the Second World War, he was tasked with directing the development of the world’s first nuclear arsenal. Known as the Manhattan Project, this super-secretive wartime project had the stoic visage of Oppenheimer overseeing the greatest experiment ever conducted by humankind. Much had happened in Oppenheimer’s life to lead him to this point, and much would subsequently take place after, but this moment was indeed the pinnacle of his career and his life.

Continuously in demand since its first, prize-winning edition was published in 1975, this is the classic history of Hiroshima and the origins of the arms race, from the development of the American atomic bomb to the decision to use it against Japan and the beginnings of U.S. atomic diplomacy toward the Soviet Union.

Redeye Fulda Cold by Bill Fortin is a first in series of a "MASH-like" war stories. Set in 1969 West Germany; the deployment of the newly developed Redeye ground to air missile system is brought to bear inside the 3rd Armored Division’s 1st/48th Infantry Battalion. This very inspiring tale inside a very Cold War takes the men of the 3rd Armored Division though a series of history making operations. Carefully crafted CIA planning provides the pause necessary and ultimately prevents a nuclear showdown with Russia. The infamous Fulda Gap becomes the center stage of the action.

In his shocking and revelatory new work, celebrated journalist William Langewiesche investigates the burgeoning threat of nuclear-weapons production and the inexorable drift of nuclear-weapons technology from the hands of the rich into the hands of the poor. As more unstable and undeveloped nations acquire the ultimate arms, the stakes of state-sponsored nuclear activity have soared to frightening heights. Even more disturbing is the likelihood of such weapons being used by guerrilla non-state terrorists.