A riveting, chilling tale of how a group of ragtag activists infiltrated one of the most secure nuclear weapons sites in the United States, told alongside a broader history of America's nuclear stewardship, from the early stages of the Manhattan Project to our country's never-ending investment in nuclear weaponry."--

The most important place in American nuclear history are the Marshall Islands--an idyllic Pacific paradise that served as the staging ground for over sixty US nuclear tests. It was here, from 1946 to 1958, that America perfected the weapon that preserved the peace of the post-war years. It was here--with the 1954 Castle Bravo test over Bikini Atoll--that America executed its largest nuclear detonation, a thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima....

"A thrilling narrative of scientific triumph-and the unimaginable, world-ending peril it brought us. Fearing that the Germans would be the first to weaponize the atom, the United States marshaled brilliant minds and seemingly inexhaustible bodies to finda way to create a nuclear chain reaction with unimaginable explosive power. It would begin with plutonium, the first element ever manufactured by humans. In a matter of months, a city designed to produce...

"Here, for the first time, former high level defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg reveals his shocking first-hand account of America's nuclear program in the 1960s. From the remotest air bases in the Pacific Command, where he discovered that the authority to initiate use of nuclear weapons was widely delegated, to the secret plans for general nuclear war under Eisenhower, which, if executed, would cause the near-extinction of humanity, Ellsberg shows that...