The Unfinished Twentieth Century: The Crisis of Weapons of Mass Destruction

“Surveying the century ‘of the Somme, of the Gulag, of the Holocaust’ and of the atomic bomb, [Schell] wonders at a certain implicit optimism among historians ready to call it ‘short.’”—The Nation“This compelling exploration … frames the nuclear debate in terms stark enough to rouse even the most politically ambivalent reader.”—UTNE Reader“Readers who’ve been emptying bookstores in search of instant wisdom on low-tech terrorism and early Islam would be wise to pick up The Unfinished Twentieth Century that tells how we got into this nuclear mess and how we might get out of it.”—New York Times“His somber plea for the major nuclear powers to adopt an abolitionist agenda before the minor nuclear players do us all in … comes freighted with a poignant urgency.”—New York Times Book Review“With the Senate’s failure to ratify the comprehensive test ban treaty and President George W. Bush’s unwillingness to use a treaty to formalize further weapons reductions, Schell’s pessimism over the direction of arms control is well-founded.”—Times Higher Education Supplement