The Hand of God: From Oppenheimer to Hypersonics – A Crash Course on Nuclear Weapons and Humankind’s Most Dangerous Game by Paul McCarthy – Review by Roxsanne Lesieur.

The Hand of God: From Oppenheimer to Hypersonics – A Crash Course on Nuclear Weapons and Humankind’s Most Dangerous Game by Paul McCarthy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The development of nuclear warfare has been ongoing for over a century now and it doesn’t show any sign of stopping, so when that reality hits, it is best to at least have a heads up on what exactly it entails. This is where this book comes in, it has a breakdown of parts ranging from the scientific history, the weapons themselves, as well as the differences between the approaches of different countries as this development occured, but be warned, it is not for the faint of heart or easily perturbed due to the subject matter within.

In part one, is the outline of the who, what, where and how of the steps taken to identify and understand nuclear weapons and exactly what happens inside them.

Part two speaks about the reactions of the different countries and their races to become the top of the nuclear weapons food chain, including the threat level each country has to the others.

Part three talks about the weapons in more detail, how they work and who has control over them, as well as when and how they are deployed.

Part four discusses the affects of the aftermath of these weapons and what the resulting radiation can do to the human body and the natural world.

Finally, part five discussed the future of this technology and what this means for the future generations as well as discussing some of the moral and ethical implications of what this might mean.

This is a work of non-fiction which is easy to understand, interesting to anyone, no matter what their level of prior knowledge is, as well as being straight forward, to the point and a great introduction to the subject with plenty of further reading cited at the end.

Reviewed by @roxsannel
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