Nuclear Weapons: 1945 Onwards (Strategic and Tactical Delivery Systems) (Operations Manual)

Great highly illustrated overview of nuke development typical of this series.....

Because of the growing concern over N. Korea's continued provocative tests, I wanted to see what was up. This covers all the different nuclear nations both stealth and out in the open and was of great interest. Anybody can understand these and the tech diagrams are fascinating, illuminating the complexity of these devices and their development. I am very fearful of nukes but to understand is to better know that at least we Russia and the USA have far less then at the peak of the cold war when we had between 3 to 5 times more weapons then we do now. This is another good reason not to wreck diplomacy by blasting Russia as the US tends to do to deflect from our own domestic problems. I am a decline to state voter and did not vote but the awesome power of these weapons make it imperative that we have better relations with any country that has them and is reasonable like China which has only 300 and Russia who simply kept up with our rapid buildup after WW2. Must read. Great Pictures.

Considering the deep veil of secrecy surrounding the subject, it's not terribly surprising there aren't many books focusing on the science, development, and manufacture of nuclear weapons. Although there have been hundreds of books written on the Manhattan Project (Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb being the obvious example), there's only a handful focusing on the last 50 years, most of them being expensive out of print specialty titles. Although this book suffers somewhat from the limitations of the Haynes format, it's still a very admirable attempt at an international history of nuclear weapons development.Each of the five major nuclear powers (the United States, Russia, Britain, France, and China) receives its own chapter, describing each nation's path to the bomb, important physicists and scientific breakthroughs, their test program, and some of the weapons that were part of their past and present stockpiles. A seperate chapter is devoted to minor nuclear powers such as India, Pakistan, and North Korea. The first chapter serves as a crash course on nuclear physics, complete with periodic table and explanations of chain reactions and radioactive decay. The final chapter focuses mainly on the development of blunt-body reentry vehicles and the many difficulties involved in a shaping an ICBM's trajectory. As you might have guessed, this is mainly a technical and scientific history, with doesn't feel the need to rehash the numerous political, ethical, military, and philosophical debates which have surrounded nuclear weapons from day one. I haven't read much about how other nations developed their own nuclear weapons, so a good chunk of this book was new to me. I imagine anyone obsessed with the subject won't find much new, but for me, it was a fine refresher course.Although Haynes is a British publisher, and their books are obviously going to focus on British subjects, it's still odd to have the chapter on British nuclear weapons taking up as much real estate as it does. While the Russian bomb receives 20 pages, the French 12, and China 16, the United Kingdom gets a comparatively luxurious 42 pages. As seems to be a recurring problem with Haynes, many of the Metric to Imperial conversions are totally out of whack, and there are numerous instances where incorrect dates are given, or the text and photo captions aren't totally in sync with each other.Although it's not without some flaws, and occasionally tries to squeeze too much into 196 pages, this is a rare international history on nuclear weapons, and I have to recommend it as such. It's rather clinical and dry and times, but worth owning if the subject interests you.

This book has so much information on nuclear weapons than I thought. I’m a nuclear weaponry history buff because the power of the bomb always fanaticized me. I understand how a nuclear weapon function, but I would never understand the power of a nuclear weapon that released such power...such sheer power. This is why I'm so interested in this subject. I highly recommended this book because it explains the functionary of nuclear weapons, photos I’ve never seen; and the pros and cons of having an arsenal of nuclear weapons. I hope that Pakistan and India have enough sense not to use them on each other. Look what happened to the people of Hiroshima. I wasn’t aware that South Africa already has them, but they’ve decided to renounce them. If you’re interested in nuclear weapons, then this book is for you.

Decent development history for each country, but a little lacking in actual weapon information. While this is certainly understandable for some countries, there are plenty of publicly available references for the US arsenal (going back 30 years) that could have been expanded on

History and description and comparison of the worlds nuclear weapons . Very good book.

Informative and enjoyable reading material on the history of modern nuclear weapons.

Excellent and detailed about the actual weapons and not just the history leading up.

A bit scary, in the light of current world events

Wie bereits aus anderen Rezensionen hervorgeht ist dieses Buch übersät von widersprüchlichen Falschheiten. Beispiele Wurden bereits gegeben hier ein Weiteres Z.b auf S50 "The real Significance of the Hiroshima bomb was that it was the First Test of a Plutonium device, of a gun-assembly design..." Wo der Autor uns zuvor mitgeteilt hatte das in der Little Boy Bombe Au guten Gründen kein Plutonium zum Einsatz kam.

The book provides a lot of fascinating information, including photos, diagrams and blueprints. Not only it describes technical details about both explosive devices and delivery systems, but also provides a lot of historical details which are equally fascinating.Great quality print too!

Il libro presenta immagini davvero belle, difficilmente reperibili altrove ma la trattazione dell'argomento appare eccessivamente sintetica. Mi aspettavo molte più informazioni, se non sulle singole testate - complice il fatto che vengono presi in esame gli arsenali di diversi Paesi -, almeno sui sistemi di lancio. Quasi del tutto assente ogni sorta di riferimento ai sottomarini di Classe Ohio e dei bombardieri strategici ci sono più immagini che righe a essi relativi. Se vi accontentate delle basi, compratelo. Se volete qualche dettaglio in più, cercate altrove.

I can not adequately explain how good this book is. I own a number of the other "owners manuals", The Enterprise, a couple of the Apollo ones, but this is possibly the best so far. As has been said, it's a good historical reference, well illistrayed, and well written.Can't do anything but tecomend it.