The Scoop & Behind the screen Book

The sequel to Dyson's excellent autobiography "Disturbing the Universe", "Weapons and Hope" combines chapters about his father's inadvertent career as the World War One aliies' authority on the use of hand grenades with chapters dealing with truth, ignorance, and deliberate fables about how nuclear weapons ought to be used and defended against.

Dyson's an authority on the subject - a mathematical physicist whose career began in the US nuclear weapons development laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, he collaborated with some of the greatest nuclear weapons designers on Earth. He is most famous for, along with maverick nuclear weapons designer Theodore Taylor, having come up with Project Orion, a proposal to use nuclear detonations to propel huge spacecraft at enormous speeds. Variations on this concept are still being seriously studied now. He also helped prevent what would have been the disastrous use of tactical nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War, which would not have set the Communists back much, but set a precedent for the wide and routine use of nuclear weapons in war, lowering the threshold for their use.

In this book, Professor Dyson explores how national decision-makers think about nuclear war, and how this isn't always well-considered or intelligent thought. He also applies the same criticisms to how leaders in various peace and disarmament movements think about nuclear war. The result's an unflinching assessment of how we think about actually using (or defending ourselves from) the world's still-massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

In a world that is re-entering a nuclear arms race, this book is must reading for everyone who votes.

I say this as someone whose skepticism about the usefulness of arms control seems to be vindicated by the steady increase of the Russian and Chinese strategic nuclear arsenals, but recognizes that the best response to those increases may actually be not to buy more and deadlier nuclear weapons and delivery systems, but to limit the damage enemy nuclear weapons can do. Here, Dyson has plenty to say, and it's all worth reading.

Dyson and I do agree that the Swiss have been more intelligent than we have been - they invested considerable money in nuclear bomb shelters, modifying building codes to require them in every new home and creating massive underground shelters with their own hospitals and other facilities to protect their people from nuclear war all around them in Europe. While these things aren't cheap, their cost is incredibly small compared to the new bombers and missiles we're about to buy, and a national shelter system would do much to make other nations more reluctant to attack the United States. The Russians and Chinese have excellent nuclear shelters for their people, and one day they may consider - if we don't take steps to protect our population - that they have much less to lose from a nuclear war than we do - and start one.

Even if you don't agree with everything Freeman Dyson might say, you'll be much better informed on the subject of nuclear weapons in our society after reading this book.