nuclear weapons

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/31/2020
  

  George Shultz Speaks Out for Renewing U.S. Leadership Overseas

  The long-serving Secretary of State's new book laments the unwillingness of current leadership to embrace the international cooperation and diplomacy needed to solve the world's largest problems.   

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• 10/18/2020
  

  "The Silent Guns of Two Octobers" Reviewing a New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis

  by Sheldon M. Stern

  Longtime JFK Library historian Sheldon Stern offers a review of a new book on the diplomatic resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Decoded
  10/13/2020
  

  The Cuban Missile Crisis: Once More Unto the Breach

  by Sheldon M. Stern

  As the anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis approaches, longtime JFK Library historian Sheldon Stern reviews Theodore Voorhees Jr.'s new book, which argues that Kennedy and Kruschev each assumed personal control of negotiations in a way that rendered threats of war from hawkish subordinates all bark and no bite.

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  10/5/2020
  

  The Day Nuclear War Almost Broke Out

  "There should, it seems, be a useful lesson to be learned from that frantic afternoon. But what, in God’s name, is it?"

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• SOURCE: Contingent
  10/8/2020
  

  The Desert Keeps Receipts

  by B. Erin Cole

  A meditation on the preservation of the Nevada Test Site in graphic form.

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• SOURCE: National History Center
  10/1/2020
  

  Washington History Seminar 10/2: Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1945-1962

  The National History Center, The Woodrow Wilson Center and Politics & Prose Books prouldy host Martin Sherwin on Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1945-1962. Friday, October 2, 6:00 PM. 

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  9/24/2020
  

  This Vanishing Moment and Our Vanishing Future: John Hersey, Hiroshima, and the End of World

  by Nick Turse

  Lesley Blume's new book Fallout describes how John Hersey and his editors punctured official myths about the Hiroshima attacks to write his influential book. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/25/2020
  

  New Video Shows Largest Hydrogen Bomb Ever Exploded

  Although the Soviet Union succeeded in testing a hydrogen bomb more than three times more powerful than the largest U.S.-tested weapon, most military leaders in the cold war sought to make the weapons smaller for strategic reasons. Recently declassified Soviet video shows the test. 

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• SOURCE: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
  8/24/2020
  

  A Call for Antiracist Action and Accountability in the US Nuclear Community

  The history of nuclear power and nuclear weapons has historically been entangled with the history of colonialism and global white supremacy. 

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• 8/16/2020
  

  Who Shaped the Story of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

  by William Johnston

  Most Americans' knowledge of Hiroshima and Nagasaki reflects how American leaders in 1945 wanted the atomic bombings remembered more than their real history. 

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• 8/9/2020
  

  Honor a Hiroshima Survivor's Legacy: Ban Nuclear Testing and Move to Disarmament

  by William Lambers

  Miyoko Matsubara survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and became an advocate for abolishing nuclear weapons. The United States Senate can honor her and all victims and survivors of nuclear war by ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. 

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• SOURCE: The New York Times
  8/6/2020
  

  Witnessing Nuclear Carnage, Then Devoting Her Life to Peace

  Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima 75 years ago this month, has used the power of her personal story to try to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/6/2020
  

  After Atomic Bombings, These Photographers Worked Under Mushroom Clouds

  Photographs commissioned by Japanese newspapers in the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were suppressed by American occupation authorities in both countries. A new book offers Americans a new opportunity to grasp the physical and human toll of nuclear weapons. 

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• SOURCE: Stars and Stripes
  8/4/2020
  

  ‘Irresistible Weapon’: Historians Say American History Oversimplifies Atomic Bombings On Japan

  Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., author and blogger on atomic bomb history, said time has smoothed the wrinkles and simplified the facts that are often taught about the first and, so far, only wartime use of atomic weapons.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/5/2020
  

  In The 75 Years Since Hiroshima, Nuclear Testing Killed Untold Thousands

  The Marshall Islands were exposed to the daily equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima-sized explosions between 1946 and 1958, if the impact were spread evenly.

• 
• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  7/24/2020
  

  A Magazine Story Opened Eyes to Hiroshima’s Horror. White House Allies Plotted to Shut Them Again.

  by Greg Mitchell

  The Hersey article, with its unflinching account of what survivors witnessed in Hiroshima, threatened the official narrative of justification.

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• 8/2/2020
  

  Better Than Silence: The Need for Memorials to the Manhattan Project

  by Stephen Kiernan

  Creating the bomb was both a milestone achievement, and a profound expansion of the limits of warfare. This complexity deserves a permanent public memorial.

• 
• SOURCE: Z Blogs
  7/16/2020
  

  Making America Feared Again: The Trump Administration Considers Resuming Nuclear Weapons Testing

  by Lawrence Wittner

  Americans who grew up with nightmares of nuclear weapons explosions should get ready for some terrifying flashbacks, for the Trump administration appears to be preparing to resume U.S. nuclear weapons tests.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  7/16/2020
  

  The Open Mind (Reprinted from 1949)

  by J. Robert Oppenheimer

  The former head of the Manhattan Project wrote about how to advance peace in the nuclear age, just four years after he directed the construction of the world’s first atomic bomb.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/16/2020
  

  Trump Ignores The History Of Nuclear Weapons At Our Peril

  by William Lambers

  We must not become complacent about this threat after so many years and just casually accept their existence. Seventy-five years after Trinity, banning nuclear testing and working toward eliminating nukes is the only sensible path forward.