Shelfari Book Activity

Hiroshima

by John Hersey

On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city. This book tells what happened on that day, told through the memoirs of survivors.

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Dark Biology

The Demon in the Freezer

by Richard Preston

“The bard of biological weapons captures the drama of the front lines.” -Richard Danzig, former secretary of the navy The first major bioterror event in the United States-the anthrax attacks in October 2001-was a clarion call for scientists who work with “hot” agents to find ways of... (learn more about this book)

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

by Richard Rhodes

Here for the first time, in rich, human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan. Few great discoveries have evolved... (learn more about this book)

Thirteen Days

by Robert F. Kennedy

The unique, gripping account of the perilous showdown between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the thirteen days in October 1962 when the United States confronted the Soviet Union over its installation of missiles in Cuba, few people shared the behind-the-scenes story as it is... (learn more about this book)

The Dead Hand

by David Hoffman

This riveting narrative history of the end of the arms race sheds new light on the frightening last chapters of the Cold War and the legacy of the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that remain a threat today. During the Cold War, world superpowers amassed nuclear arsenals containing... (learn more about this book)

When the Eagle Screams

by Stephen Bowman

The author who predicted the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City terrorist acts details problems and solutions.

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Germs

by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, William J. Broad

In the wake of the anthrax letters following the attacks on the World Trade Center, Americans have begun to grapple with two difficult truths: that there is no terrorist threat more horrifying -- and less understood -- than germ warfare, and that it would take very little to mount a... (learn more about this book)

Last Train from Hiroshima

by Charles Pellegrino

Drawing on the voices of atomic-bomb survivors and the new science of forensic archaeology, Charles Pellegrino describes the events and aftermath of two days in August when nuclear devices detonated over Japan changed life on Earth forever Last Train from Hiroshima offers readers a... (learn more about this book)

Biohazard

by Ken Alibek

Anthrax. Smallpox. Incurable and horrifying Ebola-related fevers. For two decades, while a fearful world prepared for nuclear winter, an elite team of Russian bioweaponeers began to till a new killing field: a bleak tract sown with powerful seeds of mass destruction--by doctors who had... (learn more about this book)

The Gun

by C. J. Chivers

At a secret arms-design contest in Stalin’s Soviet Union, army technicians submitted a stubby rifle with a curved magazine. Dubbed the AK-47, it was selected as the Eastern Bloc’s standard arm. Scoffed at in the Pentagon as crude and unimpressive, it was in fact a breakthrough—a compact... (learn more about this book)