War And Peace In The Nuclear Age

The world as we know it was changed forever at dawn on the morning of July 16, 1945 when the first nuclear explosion shattered the New Mexico desert calm (although no one would realize that until three weeks later, when the Enola Gay dropped "Little Boy", instantaneously killing some 80,000 residents of Hiroshima.) This thirteen-part series traces the development of nuclear weapons and their consequent social, political, and historical effects over the past 40 years. In the first episode "Dawn", the history of the advances in theoretical physics during the 20's and 30's are seen against the backdrop of rising aggression and political chicanery in the world at large. Rarely seen archival footage is interwoven with present day interviews of politicians from the period, as well as a number of the Los Alamos physicists who worked on The Manhattan Project. The program concludes with the beginnings of the Cold War. The other episode we previewed, "At The Brink", followed those tension-ridden 13 days in October 1962 when the world stood poised for global war. Recorded conversations of John and Robert Kennedy meeting with Cabinet members reveal a less-than-confident President, who during those two weeks often came to regret the wheels that he had set in motion by insisting that Khrushchev remove the Soviet missiles from Cuban soil (a bold move, since U.S. missiles were literally knocking at the Soviet's front door in Turkey.) It worked, as we know, but it almost didn't. In the words of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara: "I remember leaving the White House at the end of that Saturday-it was a beautiful fall day-and thinking that might well be the last sunset I ever saw." A powerful, important series-and very reasonably priced. Highly recommended. (See ETHICS IN AMERICA for availability.)