Nuclear Barons

by Peter Pringle, James Spigelman

Discusses how the world's destiny is controlled by a small group of scientists, businessmen, politicians, and military officers whose decisions on nuclear power have caused the present nuclear nightmare

Genres: War, History

592 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1983

About the author

Peter Pringle is a veteran British foreign correspondent. He is theauthor and coauthor of several nonfiction books, including th ebestselling Those Are Real Bullets, Aren't They? He lives in New York City.

Series:
* Arthur Hemmings Mystery

Reviews

[Chris]

"The Nuclear Barons" is an excellent international history of the development of nuclear technology and of the expert communities who administered its rise and decline (up to 1980) in the global West. Pringle and Spigelman argue that these communities exercised enormous political and economic power in poorly-planned pursuit of military and civilian visions of nuclear-centric futures. These communities faced a highly pessimistic and uncertain future (again, from the perspective of the early 1980s) as the consequences of overpromising the capabilities of nuclear technology and the rise of scientifically-informed opposition movements threatened future development plans. What Pringle and Spigelman managed to put together in these pages is roughly a nuclear equivalent to Yergin's "The Prize."