Countdown - by Sarah Scoles (Hardcover)

About the Book

"FRESH, CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVE: Most books on nuclear weapons are focused on the past, especially World War II and the Cold War. Scoles offers the first modern analysis of nuclear weaponry today that goes beyond just geopolitical consequences but cultural as well"--

Book Synopsis

For fans of Oppenheimer, a riveting investigation into the modern nuclear weapons landscape.

Nuclear weapons are, today, as important as they were during the Cold War, and some experts say we could be as close to a nuclear catastrophe now as we were at the height of that conflict. Despite that, conversations about these bombs generally often happen in past tense.

In Countdown, science journalist Sarah Scoles uncovers a different atomic reality: the nuclear age's present.

Drawing from years of on-the-ground reporting at the nation's nuclear weapons labs, Scoles interrogates the idea that having nuclear weapons keeps us safe, deterring attacks and preventing radioactive warfare. She deftly assesses the existing nuclear apparatus in the United States, taking readers beyond the news headlines and policy-speak to reveal the state of nuclear-weapons technology, as well as how people currently working within the U.S. nuclear weapons complex have come to think about these bombs and the idea that someone, someday, might use them.

Through a sharp, surprising, and undoubtedly urgent narrative, Scoles brings us out of the Cold War and into the twenty-first century, opening readers' eyes to the true nature of nuclear weapons and their caretakers while also giving us the context necessary to understand the consequences of their existence, for worse and for better, for now and for the future.

Review Quotes

Finalist of the Colorado Book Awards

Top Ten Books of 2024--Wall Street Journal

"Countdown" is an accessible account of a key, yet underrecognized aspect of America's nuclear arsenal. ...Her science journalist eyes capture the complexity of the subject while also elucidating it for the average reader."--The SCIF

"Countdown is an amazingly thoughtful piece of reporting about all the practical issues of living with nuclear weapons. Sarah Scoles writes vividly about Los Alamos and the people who work day to day in the weapon labs."
--Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and coauthor of American Prometheus

"In the 21st century, most of us tend to comfortably forget that clock has never stopped ticking on human development of nuclear weapons since their deadly war-time beginning. Sarah Scole's Countdown is an indispensable guide to a little seen history and a wonderfully human introduction to the often unheralded scientists who work to keep us safe - so that we can comfortably forget."
--Deborah Blum, Pulitzer-prize winning author of The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the 20th Century

"In this astute assessment of the current situation regarding nuclear weapons, Scoles offers a must-read overview of America's nuclear arsenal... Everything you ever wanted to know about the current nuclear-weapon landscape."
--Kirkus, starred review

"Scoles capably addresses the tension between these camps, providing nuanced portraits of nuclear scientists that find most 'are neither hawks nor total doves'...Scoles's measured final analysis occupies a similar middle ground, suggesting that upgrading America's nuclear weapons probably does discourage other countries from using theirs, even as doing so threatens to "foment a never-ending arms race." Readers on both sides of the debate will find much to ponder."
--Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Sarah Scoles is a Colorado-based science journalist, a contributing writer at Popular Science, and a senior contributor at Undark. Her work has appeared in publications like the New York Times, Wired, Scientific American, and others. She is also the author of the books Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers, and Astronomical Mindfulness. Her forthcoming book is called Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons. Her articles have won the American Geophysical Union's David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Writing (2021) and the American Astronomical Society Solar Physics Division's Popular Media Award (2019, 2020). Previously, she was an associate editor at Astronomy and a public education officer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia.