A fiery peace in a cold war
Bernard Schriever and the ultimate weapon
by Neil Sheehan · first published 2009
100% recommend
From Neil Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer Prize--winning classic A Bright Shining Lie, comes this long-awaited, magnificent epic. Here is the never-before-told story of the nuclear arms race that changed history--and of the visionary American Air Force officer Bernard Schriever, who led the high-stakes effort. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War is a masterly work about Schriever's quests to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring nuclear superiority, to penetrate and exploit space for America, and to build the first weapons meant to deter an atomic holocaust rather than to be fired in anger.Sheehan m
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Listened to a lot of audiobooks this year, and can recommend: A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon by Neil Sheehan (Biography and background to the development of the ICBM) The American War in Afghanistan: A History by Carter Malkasian One Minute to Midnight…
on “Ask HN: Best books read in 2022” ↗…had the chiefs of all the armed forces and the chiefs of staff there too but that isn't really covering the actual technical work he did there (a good reference for his government consultancies is `A Fiery Peace in a Cold War`). He obviously consulted widely in the military, CIA, NSA, etc, military establishment in general but in terms of technical work not much is there, presumably because all the records are hidden or classified.…
on “A new biography explains the genius of John von Neumann” ↗…computing, has some things that aren't written in the others as Dyson did a particularly good job going through some of the archives, but not as much focused on von Neumann compared to the others. - A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon Isn't a biography of von Neumann but of Schriever, who worked with von Neumann to setup the first ICBM programs in the USA. Obviously the main focus here is…
on “Life is not short” ↗