The author gets off to a really bad start, which really made me wonder if I'd just wasted money on this book. If he did this little research on how an A-bomb goes off, what the hell sort of research was the rest of the book like? This really bothered me. I saw some evidence he pooched it.

He describes an atomic explosion and, well ... to me, he doesn't worry about those picky little details when drama sounds better. Tom Clancy got the details right and got the drama right, and Tom deliberately changed the H-bomb design to not give it away in the process. I can give you a long, depressing list of what's wrong in this book by Page 25.

I mean, is it asking too much for this guy to have looked at, say, Samuel Glasstone's *very readable* books on atomic energy, say, "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons"? That would have been an excellent starter book for him, if he didn't want to make all the stunning whoppers he did in the first chapter. (I was actually laughing out loud and got out my yellow highlighter marking the mistakes.)

I like the "consistency" of his writing. Page 1: "The reactions could be sustained for just a millisecond, ..." Page 3: "...the nuclear chain reaction endures for a millionth of a second."

Oh, well, milliseconds, shmilliseconds! Who cares! It's only a thousand times different!

"Uranium is one of the heaviest elements on earth." No. It's the heaviest natural element. Anything heavier is man-made and unstable (radioactive). Anything heavier did not exist until 1940.

He doesn't know that what released energy is the Curve of Binding Energy. Uranium is a nucleus so big it's hard to hold together! Once you split it, the two things it splits into are far easier to hold together. And in fact the mass of the two doesn't add up quite; that converts to energy. He says "two pounds of uranium converted to energy". He doesn't quite get what's going on. He needs to get John McPhee's book: "The Curve of Binding Energy".

The author is just *obsessed* with the figure of 100 pounds of 90% HEU (Highly Enriched Uranium) as needed for a bomb. This may have been used for the first one in 1945, but that was a "committee bomb", purposely overbuilt to work-without-a-test. Everyone agreed it was stupid. No one with any clue builds a bomb that way now. But he goes stomping around asking everyone about 100 pounds. Imagine people's reaction.

You know, he *almost* realizes that something ...might be wrong... when a physicist suggests that loading a horse with two 50-pound HEU bricks on either side won't work, as the water in the camel is a neutron moderator. But, he doesn't pursue this, and the author just hasn't read up on the endlessly available literature on neutron reflectors that cut way down on the amount of HEU material needed. (Good grief, has he never heard of Wikipedia? It's all there.)

You know ... I imagine him going into Russia, which he does, and asking the Russians how they would protect from people stealing 100 lbs. of HEU for one bomb. And the Russians are looking at him, wondering, "Doesn't this guy even know it takes maybe ~~ 40 lbs with a good reflector?" I bet they had fun playing with him.

I like how he says, "... for seconds afterward, a pulse of electromagnetic gamma rays, similar to light but more powerful, flows ... to a distance of two miles."

He apparently never learned that the nitrogen in the air absorbs the soft X-rays which are the first thing out of a detonation and superheats them to about an 18" radius sphere. He doesn't seem to know that gamma rays *are* electromagnetic rays, like light, sound, AM radio, etc.
He's thinking of an EMP pulse. Doesn't work that way.

I also really liked this one. "The first [thermal pulse] is weak... it consists of ultraviolet radiation."

Hunh? Ultraviolet is above violet, above human vision frequency. Strangely, infrared, (heat), is below red, below human vision frequency. Truly another scientific stunner. Probably those EMP pulses will be broadcasting rap soon.

Then he does the blast effect and completely misses the Mach Stem effect, and misses the psi overpressure, which is how you figure out the damage.

I have no doubt that the physicist that he visited had to visibly work to keep his calm after having this silliness spouted at him. It would have been nice if the author had done Homework 101, but he just didn't.

I'm sorry to give this such a bad review, but throw away the first quarter. It's useless. Get Sam Glasstone's book. The rest of the book is interesting, but you have to remember, you're seeing it through the eyes of ClueLessNess. Mr. 100 Pounds of HEU goes looking.

He is also seriously hung up on centrifuges -- and there are just plain other ways.

Thanks, and I hope this helps.

-- Dave

Although an excellent writer (it seems that all of the contributors to Atlantic Monthly are), Mr. Langewiesche's focus in this book is not sharp and wanders a bit too much for my taste. It zigzags between giving excellent but very selective snapshots of a history of the nuclear arms race, and an overly detailed and spotty but also selective account of the threats of renegade nuclear bomb development among non-state actors. Although his investigative work with regards to Russia and its neighbors was interesting, in the end it revealed very little and made a muddle of what we already know. A sharper set of objectives may have helped sharpen his conclusions.

In the case of his fragmented snapshot of nuclear history, while his details of nuclear effects were simply superb, I believe that in his catalogue of tactics and strategies for acquiring nuclear bomb materials, he was remiss in not including, or even mentioning the methods Israel used to develop its nuclear capability and the role Israeli nuclear weapons more generally continue to play in the tensions in the Middle East.

Even being sympathetic to the threats to Israel's security, its role in the regional nuclear arms race is still important for at least four reasons. In the first instance, it is reputed that the fissile materials Israeli used to fuel its first bomb were stolen from U.S. stocks. If Israel can steal such materials, maybe other can do so as well. Second, arguably it was the development of the Israeli bomb that set off the regional nuclear arms race we are now witnessing today; and that it, as much as anything else, has resulted in the scuttling of the NPT Treaty.

Thirdly, the clandestine way Israel acquired its fissile materials, and the way it fabricated its weapons under the pretext of a need for more nuclear energy has indeed become THE template followed by other aspiring nuclear states. And finally, it is not just coincidental that the subtext of the Muslim and Arab rush to develop nuclear weapons, rest on the fact that the world turned a blind eye to Israel's nuclear developments and continues to remain in denial about its effect on the tensions underlying the Middle East's regional nuclear arms race.

The most threatening of the nuclear capable states that have emerged (outside of North Korea and South Africa (which developed its bomb with Israeli assistance)) are Muslims from the same dangerous neighborhood of the Middle East where Israeli nuclear weapons represent an existential threat, as well as an uncomfortable fail accompli to those in the region.

Anyone who has spent any time at all at the UN, as I have, or who has followed its debates on nuclear issues, knows that the issue of Israel's nuclear weapons has been the catalyst for a generation of nuclear angst in the region. Not to have mentioned Israel at all, strikes me as fatally unbalanced, and an unforgivable oversight. But three stars for the brilliant description of nuclear effects in the bombs detonated over Japan.

Although an excellent writer (it seems that all of the contributors to Atlantic Monthly are), Mr. Langewiesche's focus in this book is not sharp and wanders a bit too much for my taste. It zigzags between giving excellent but very selective snapshots of a history of the nuclear arms race, and an overly detailed and spotty but also selective account of the threats of renegade nuclear bomb development among non-state actors. Although his investigative work with regards to Russia and its neighbors was interesting, in the end it revealed very little and made a muddle of what we already know. A sharper set of objectives may have helped sharpen his conclusions.

In the case of his fragmented snapshot of nuclear history, while his details of nuclear effects were simply superb, I believe that in his catalogue of tactics and strategies for acquiring nuclear bomb materials, he was remiss in not including, or even mentioning the methods Israel used to develop its nuclear capability and the role Israeli nuclear weapons more generally continue to play in the tensions in the Middle East.

Even being sympathetic to the threats to Israel's security, its role in the regional nuclear arms race is still important for at least four reasons. In the first instance, it is reputed that the fissile materials Israeli used to fuel its first bomb were stolen from U.S. stocks. If Israel can steal such materials, maybe other can do so as well. Second, arguably it was the development of the Israeli bomb that set off the regional nuclear arms race we are now witnessing today; and that it, as much as anything else, has resulted in the shuttling of the NPT Treaty.

Thirdly, the clandestine way Israel acquired its fissile materials, and the way it fabricated its weapons under the pretext of a need for more nuclear energy has indeed become the same template that is being followed by other aspiring nuclear states. And finally, it is not just coincidental that the subtext of the Muslim and Arab rush to develop nuclear weapons, rest on the fact that the world turned a blind eye to Israel's nuclear developments and continues to remain in denial about its effect on the tensions underlying the Middle East's regional nuclear arms race.

The most threatening of the nuclear capable states that have emerged (outside of North Korea and South Africa (which developed its bomb with Israeli assistance)) are Muslims from the same dangerous neighborhood of the Middle East where Israeli nuclear weapons represent an existential threat, and an uncomfortable fail accompli to those in the region.

Anyone who has spent any time at all at the UN, as I have, or who has followed its debates on nuclear issues, knows that the issue of Israel's nuclear weapons has been the catalyst for a generation of nuclear angst in the region. Not to have mentioned Israel at all, strikes me as fatally unbalanced, and an unforgivable oversight. But three stars for the brilliant description of nuclear effects in the bombs detonated over Japan.

What if ...Iran covertly buys Enriched Uranium from North Korea?...then claims it produced it ..this is the very reason Israel has made contingency plans for a strike on the Known Nuclear sites...its really hard to believe that the World is not taking the Iranian threat seriously,during WW2 we had "Plausible" deniability that a Whole race of people were being savagely eradicated because nothing of that Magnitude had ever happened before at least not to that extent ..but here we have group of fanatical religous Mullahs controlling Iran ..Babbling Daily about wiping Israel off the Map and the World seems to be so de-sensitized about the plight of the Jews that is goes on without condemnation..if any other country was threatened this way ,there would be World wide outrage.

This book examines two basic issues: the proliferation of nuclear weapons among countries and the possibility of terrorists getting their hands on a nuclear bomb. With regard to countries, the author makes the point that the technology of atomic weapons is now over 60 years old and there is no way to really stop a determined country from acquiring these weapons. Pakistan's nuclear program is used as an example. Prime Minister Bhutto (the father of Benazir Bhutto) said the Pakistani people would eat grass if necessary to get the bomb and indeed Pakistan proved unstoppable. On this subject the book includes a mini biography of AQ Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistani bomb and a discussion of institutional corruption in that country.

On the subject of terrorism, a persuasive case is made that government agencies working through bureaucratic channels are incompetent to stop a determined terrorist. Instances of waste and pointless expenditure are sited, like the financing a luxurious customs house for a foreign country in the middle of a wilderness where it can easily by bypassed by anyone so inclined. Nevertheless, the author explains that there are high natural barriers to stealing fissile material and making a bomb and this is why it has not happened. Even if many parts of the world are ungoverned and ungovernable it does not mean that local gangsters and drug smugglers do not know who is trying to move dangerous materials across their turf. These people who rule the street have no particular interest in helping strangers smuggle nuclear weapons. The author advocates that instead of dealing with government bureaucrats in national capitals, government agencies should forge ties to these individuals in order to enlist their help in watching for nuclear terrorists.

On the whole, this book is non-ideological and rooted in common sense. It presents a bleak picture of proliferation without being alarmist. It is a useful book for readers seeking a realistic view of nuclear proliferation.