Overview

Why is the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight than ever before? In Tickling the Dragon's Tail, readers are taken deep inside the political and military decisions that have shaped our nuclear age. From the bombing of Hiroshima to near-catastrophes like the Cuban Missile Crisis and a NATO exercise that almost triggered World War III, this gripping history uncovers the hidden motivations and power struggles behind America's atomic policy. With chilling clarity and meticulous research, Kaplan reveals how the United States used the quest for nuclear supremacy to shape global politics and foreign relations-often at staggering risk. Readers will discover disturbing truths, including: Why top U.S. generals believed the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unnecessary. The U.S. spared six Japanese cities from its devastating conventional bombing campaign so they would be available as targets for the atomic bomb. How the U.S. made nuclear threats at least 25 times since WW II. The unsettling authority local commanders have to launch nuclear attacks. And how America's quest to be the ""world's sole superpower"" fuels today's growing nuclear danger. This book is a sobering call to reexamine the forces that brought us to the brink-and continue to steer us toward a perilous future.

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Jeffrey L. Kaplan is a historian whose work on American history has been featured in several academic and literary collections, including Sustainability: A Bedford Spotlight Reader (Bedford/St. Martin's), Poverty & Race in America: The Emerging Agendas (Rowman & Littlefield), and The Future of Nature: Writing on a Human Ecology (Milkweed Editions).

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