The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.23 (726 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0674017145 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 432 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-08-11 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Michael Pethybridge said On Thermonuclear Intellect. A confession from the reviewer, it has been almost On Thermonuclear Intellect Michael Pethybridge A confession from the reviewer, it has been almost 40 years since I sat in a university library and read "On Thermonuclear War" by Herman Kahn cover to cover. A child of the cold war, then 18 years old and contemplating inevitable military service,that book more than anything else, crystalized my perception that nuclear war was probably inevitiable, probably within my lifetime. With fresh recollections of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the inc. 0 years since I sat in a university library and read "On Thermonuclear War" by Herman Kahn cover to cover. A child of the cold war, then 18 years old and contemplating inevitable military service,that book more than anything else, crystalized my perception that nuclear war was probably inevitiable, probably within my lifetime. With fresh recollections of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the inc. "a cultural history of cold war strategists" according to Mark S. Hewitt. Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi describes herself as an independent scholar living in Champaign Illinois. She earned a doctorate in 199a cultural history of cold war strategists Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi describes herself as an independent scholar living in Champaign Illinois. She earned a doctorate in 1993 from the History of Consciousness Program, University of California at Santa Cruz with a specialization in the social studies of science and technology. Based on biographical material posted on her website, she's covered some ground, academically and geographically speaking. This interesting person has written and in. from the History of Consciousness Program, University of California at Santa Cruz with a specialization in the social studies of science and technology. Based on biographical material posted on her website, she's covered some ground, academically and geographically speaking. This interesting person has written and in. "From The Master of the Possible Future" according to Lewis Z. Koch. In today's new age of nuclear terrorism, it is vital that those responsible for security understand how yesterday's "Cold War" thinkers viewed the possibility of nuclear war. The most important of those Cold War thinkers was Herman Kahn.Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi has written an absolutely brilliant profile of the oversized multifaceted personality of Kahn, a personality so powerful that he brought out the very worst in the military and academia.
Portraying a life that combined aspects of Lenny Bruce, Hitchcock, and Kubrick, Ghamari-Tabrizi presents not one Herman Kahn, but many--one who spoke the suffocatingly dry argot of the nuclear experts, another whose buffoonery conveyed the ingenious absurdity of it all, and countless others who capered before the public, ambiguous, baffling, always open to interpretation. This, then, is a story of one thoroughly strange and captivating man as well as a cultural history of our moment. In telling the story of Herman Kahn, whose 1960 book On Thermonuclear War catapulted him into celebrity, Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi captures an era that is still very much with us--a time whose innocence, gruesome nuclear humor, and outrageous but deadly serious visions of annihilation have their echoes in the "known unknowns and unknown unknowns" that guide policymakers in our own embattled world. In Herman Kahn's world is a critical lesson about how Cold War analysts learned to fill in the ciphers of strategic uncertainty, and thus how we as a nation learned to live with the peculiarly inventive quality of strategy, in which uncertainty generates extravagant threat scenarios. Indeed, galumphing around stages across the country, joking his way through one grotesque thermonuclear scenario after another, he came frighteningly close. Herman Kahn was the only nuclear strategist in America who might have made a living as a standup comedian.
From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Herman Kahn is perhaps best known (to those who know of him at all) as the model for Stanley Kubrick's Dr. . As Ghamari-Tabrizi describes him, Kahn, first at RAND and then at the Hudson Institute (the think tank he founded in 1961), dared to talk about all aspects of nuclear warfare and ways of keeping the nuclear peace, at a time when his approach to such topics was taboo. All rights reserved. In fact, this physicist turned defense analyst achieved notoriety in the 1950s and '60s by articulating a vision of what a postnuclear-war world might look like, arguing that since it might be possible to survive a nuclear war, it was essential to plan to do just that. Throughout, we are reminded how little the U.S. Ghamari-Tabrizi is superb at providing, in compelling narrative, the cultural context for Kahn, his work and some of his more outlandish statements. 43 b&w photos not seen by PW. Ghamari-Tabrizi integrates popular culture