The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger

Now in paperback, Jonathan Schell's "The Seventh Decade" lays bare the fearful shape that nuclear danger has unexpectedly assumed in the twenty-first century. Far from disappearing with the cold war, the bomb is today in the midst of a worldwide revival. The invasion of Iraq, the nuclear programme of North Korea and Iran, the rising danger of nuclear terrorism, and the reinvigoration of the nuclear establishments among the old cold war rivals have all put the nuclear issue back on the world's front pages and returned it to the centre of geopolitical strife.Schell addresses the fundamental questions: How and why has nuclear danger revived? Where are we heading? What can be done? And, he argues that half measures will no longer suffice, nor will piece meal solutions that address isolated aspects of the crisis. Offering a comprehensive approach that takes all factors into account, "The Seventh Decade" calls for a debate, national and global, on the paths away from what still remains the gravest, most urgent of all dangers to humanity.

About the Author :
Jonathan Schell, author of The Unconquerable World and The Fate of the Earth among many other titles, is the Nation Institute's Harold Willens Peace Fellow. His "Letter from Ground Zero" column appears in The Nation regularly. He also writes for Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, and Tomdispatch.com. He is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.

Review :
"Jonathan Schell has been warning us about the dangers of nuclear weapons since his seminal book, The Fate of the Earth. The Seventh Decade shows how pressing this issue still is. Schell offers a provocative analysis of the current dangers and puts them in the context of history. It's a fascinating and important book." --Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein: His Life and Universe "In yet another tour de force, Jonathan Schell, our chronicler as conscience, addresses the salient fact of the era--that amid the ultimate terror of nuclear weapons, Americans live under one of the most heedless and dangerous governments in history. Once again, Schell honors us with a profound warning. Our consummate shame is that we do nothing about it." --Roger Morris, author of Taking Comfort "Jonathan Schell has written a courageous book, a clarion call for the world to stop its drift toward 'nuclear anarchy'--which cannot occur absent a radical change in U. S. nuclear policy." --Andrew J. Bacevich, author of The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War "No voice is as clear, no mind is as sharp, and no writings about nuclear weapons have been as perceptive as Jonathan Schell's books and articles since 1982. Now, in The Seventh Decade, Schell once again reveals in lucid prose the most inconvenient truth: the nuclear weapons policies of our government endanger our security, our planet and the very existence of our specie. This is a book that every responsible voter should read before November 2008." --Martin J. Sherwin, Pulitzer prize-winning author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer