Making Weapons, Talking Peace: A Physicist's Odyssey from Hiroshima to Geneva

York, Herbert F. (Herbert Frank)

ISBN 10: 0465043380 / ISBN 13: 9780465043385

Published by Basic Books, New York, 1987

About this Item

24 cm, 359, illus., ink name on front endpaper, DJ worn, soiled, and creased, some yellow highlighting to text, a few pages creased. The author worked on the first atomic bomb. Later, as the Director of Defense Research and Engineering under Eisenhower, he was responsible for all defense-related research. Under Carter he served as chief negotiator at the Comprehensive Test Ban talks.

Seller Inventory # 32688

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Making Weapons, Talking Peace: A Physicist's Odyssey from Hiroshima to Geneva
• Publisher: Basic Books, New York
• Publication Date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465043380
• ISBN 13: 9780465043385
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Printing.
• Condition: good, fair
• Seller catalogs:
  • Research & Develop.
  • Dwight Eisenhower

About this title

Synopsis

The author recounts his work on the Manhattan Project, as Director of Defense Research under President Eisenhower, and as a chief negotiator at the Test Ban talks under Carter

Reviews

This thought-provoking book conveys subtly its author's "sense of sin" (J. Robert Oppenheimer once said the original A-bomb scientists "knew sin" after Hiroshima) stemming from his apprenticeship as a nuclear physicist under Ernest Lawrence at the Berkeley Radiation Lab and at Livermore immediately before the Manhattan Project tested the first A-bomb at Los Alamos. York, in the decades following 1945, ventured into consultant, advisory, administrative and ultimately quasi-diplomatic roles that found him working with nuclear greats like Oppenheimer, Hans Betha, Edward Teller and others. Fragmentarily but often tellingly, he offers glimpses of the post-Sputnik response that took the form of a nationwide debate among politicos and scientists about Teller's proposed H-Bomb. York presents fresh insights into the history of the arms race that he sees today as one of the horns of a frightening superpower dilemmaas noted in the book's title. He culminates with a description of his participation in the ill-fated Salt II Treaty negotiated in Geneva. Photos.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Berkowitz was an analyst with the CIA, while York, a distinguished physicist and nuclear weapons developer, was chief negotiator at the Comprehensive Test Ban talks under President Carter. Both see arms control as a means and not an end in itself. Arms control is necessary in our nuclear world but it has limitations that must be understood. York's autobiographical work indicates that it took him some 20 years to appreciate the need for a political solution to the arms race. His early years were devoted to pushing advanced technology at the Livermore Laboratory and as director of defense research and engineering under Eisenhower. Berkowitz sketches the history of arms control from the Washington Naval Conference of 1922 to the present. He sees arms control as essential in our high-tech nuclear age, both reducing the probability of war and decreasing the expense of the arms race. However, it can't stop the development of military technology as military applications can't be separated from technology itself. Both works are recommended for their fresh analysis on arms control, York's perspective as an insider, and Berkowitz's realistic viewpoint.Dennis Felbel, Univ. of Manitoba Libs., Winnipeg, Canada
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.