One World or None

A Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb

Edited by Dexter Masters and Katharine Way

Published in conjunction with the Federation of American Scientists

hardcover

$23.95 / £14.99

In 1946, just months after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the scientists who had developed nuclear technology came together to express their concerns and thoughts about the nuclear age they had unleashed. In a small, urgent book of essays, legends including Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, and Robert Oppenheimer try to help readers understand the magnitude of their scientific breakthrough, fret openly about the implications for world policy, and caution, in the words of Nobel Prize–winning chemist Harold C. Urey, that “There is No Defense.”

The original edition of One World or None sold 100,000 copies and was a New York Times bestseller. Today, with the nuclear issue front and center once more, the book is as timely as ever.

Dexter Masters (1909–89) was a prolific writer and international bestselling author who helped found the Consumer’s Union. His legacy includes heading the first task force to publicize the dangers of smoking as well as being among the first to draw attention to the worldwide threat posed by the atomic bomb. Katharine Way (1903–95) was a pioneering nuclear physicist who helped establish the journals Nuclear Data Sheets and Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables. Based in Washington, D.C., the Federation of American Scientists was formed in 1945 by atomic scientists from the Manhattan Project who felt they had an ethical obligation to bring their knowledge and experience to bear on critical national decisions, especially pertaining to the technology they unleashed—the atomic bomb.