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Good but not great.What a frustrating book. First the good news, it is a marvelous history and worth the read. Richelson is the master in collecting data. He did it before on his books on the CIA and NSA and he does it again here.However, much like his previous books, Richelson lacks the ability to pull the pieces into a coherent whole. (I'd like to generously attribute that to the author having too much classified knowledge.) And without the context (that is surely somewhere in his notes) the g...
Very good book on intelligence efforts around nuclear development. It can be easy to get lost in the details.
My only criticism would be that this book needed to be as analytical as it was descriptive; and that suffers from the (inevitable) secrecy around these matters.
This is really two books in one. The first is the story of the nuclear programs of nations other than the United States and Great Britain: those of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, China, France, India, Israel, South Africa, Taiwan, Pakistan, Libya, North Korea and Iran. In the 1940s, the Bomb was a miracle of technology; it was beyond the reach of even such a technological leader as Germany; nowadays, even a country not known for its technological prowess like Libya can start building one. The s...
Officially on the "abandoned" list, at least in terms of reading it all in a row. Very interesting but too dense for me to treat it like a regular nonfiction read. Will probably go back to it from time to time for specific interesting things.
Detailed overview of the history of nuclear weapon proliferation. Some chapters jumped around between multiple countries and disparate dates (especially for some of the smaller programs), which made it difficult to read sometimes.
Informative, but not written in a very engaging manner.
Essential reading for anyone interested in nuclear proliferation.