| Showing 3 Listings | ‹ Prev 1 Next › | Sort By Show |
The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories
$16.95
Book
THE VOICE OF THE DOLPHINS
And Other Stores – Expanded Edition
LEO SZILARD
First published in 1961, this is a collection of stories by the eminent physicist Leo Szilard (1898-1964). The 1989 edition includes a previously uncollected story that was the origin of the idea for the Moscow-Washington hot line and a new Introduction by Barton J. Bernstein.
From the Introduction by Barton Bernstein:
ADMIRING Leo Szilard's provocative plot, his earnest plea for peace, and his spirited playfulness in "The Voice of the Dolphins," the main science fiction fable in this 1961 volume, a longtime admirer and sometime protector told him, this story is "your political testament, . . . it is the pure milk, or cream, of the Szilardian word." Penning that praise, Robert Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago, where Szilard had been a professor of physics and was still a professor of biophysics, went on to say, "I laughed and cried at the same time. I laughed because it [the story] was funny, and I cried because it was true.”
This "political testament," as Szilard himself called it, was written toward the end of his long career as a scientist, critic of the arms race, crusader for peace, and occasional science fiction writer and satirist. The "Dolphins" tale, crafted four years before Szilard's death, was one of his many efforts to guide the world through an uneasy period of nuclear stalemate, to propose rules for learning to live with the bomb, and to sketch a way out of a perilous situation and toward peace. So concerned was Szilard that his message reach important people that he sent copies to American officials, presented the analysis underlying the story at international meetings, and even arranged, shortly before publication, to have a lengthy extract of "Dolphins" translated into Russian and given to Premier Nikita Khruschev, with whom he had privately discussed its ideas a few months before.
To this fable of future history, Szilard attached four shorter tales, all written in the late 1940s, to put together his small volume, The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories. The five tales raised fundamental questions about the uses of science, the meaning of scientific progress, the menace of nuclear war, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The book, though technically classified as science fiction and often mixing in heavy doses of satire, was devised to promote Szilard's criticisms of the international system, his general hopes for rational analysis, and his ways toward arms control and ultimately disarmament. The stories are ironic, imaginative, clever, and rich with both warning and hope.
The book was published in 1961. In the next few years, it sold over 35,000 copies within the United States. It was translated into six other languages, and published in seven foreign countries, often with an additional story or two by Szilard. Winning attention for its bold thinking about nuclear issues and its clever mixture of science fiction and satire, the book became a minor classic of the nuclear age.
Comments about the 1989 Edition:
“This book is fiction, but it is a fiction of a Swiftian nature, addressed to major issues, including those of geopolitics, the arms race, disarmament, population control, the morality of war, and the mismatch between modern man’s enormous technical capabilities and his limited moral capacities. There is a continuing vitality in much of the material, which is instructive about apprehensions manifest not only in Szilard’s day but in our own concerning the social role of science and technology. I know of no other modern book like it.”
- Daniel J. Kevles, California Institute of Technology
Original reviews of the 1961 Publication:
“These stories could more appropriately be labeled ‘parables for the nuclear age.’…This makes the book sound dour, which it most certainly is not. No, it is imaginative and witty – thoroughgoing entertainment spiced with thought-provoking overtones.” – The Christian Science Monitor
“An extraordinarily well-written book…extremely satisfying as a work of art. In each story, Szilard conveys a feeling, an atmosphere that goes far beyond its overt ‘meaning.’…What he says about the eternal political situation cannot fail to move us.” – Saturday Review
This is a reproduction edition from a scanned copy of the original 1989 edition from Stanford University Press publication (ISBN: 0804717540).
INTRODUCTION by Barton J Bernstein 3
THE VOICE OF THE DOLPHINS 47
MY TRIAL AS A WAR CRIMINAL 103
THE MARK GABLE FOUNDATION 117
CALLING ALL STARS 133
THE MINED CITIES 153
AFTERWORD by Helen Weiss 175
Copyright
The Politics of Peace: An Evaluation of Arms Conrols
$18.07
Book
THE POLITICS OF PEACE
An Evaluation of Arms Control
John H. Barton
Published in 1981
As practiced in the last two decades, arms control can provide some, but only very limited, help in maintaining peace; this is the conclusion that emerges from this evaluation of the capabilities and limitations of arms control. Substantial reductions in weapons am extremely desirable, but the author suggests that the current
arms control approach is politically unable to produce such reductions, as confirmed by the SALT negotiations and the withdrawal of the draft SALT II treaty.
After reaching this pessimistic judgment, the author considers possible changes in the arms control process. He carefully examines the problem of enforcement and finds that traditional concepts of large-scale international military forces am likely to be of little help, but that less dramatic procedures based on public opinion or on very constrained use of force are likely to be much more beneficial. He then reviews possible arms control applications to identify situations in which this favorable interplay can be achieved. The resulting new arms control agenda includes international organization reform, new kinds of expert groups, and new forms of international military consultation. For all these innovations the author suggests politically plausible first steps.
John H. Barton is Professor of Law at Stanford
University, and is co-editor of International
Arms Control: Issues and Agreements
This is a reproduction edition from a scanned copy of the original work.
Title: The Politics of Peace: An Evaluation of Arms Control
Author: John H. Barton
Publisher: Stanford University Press 1981
ISBN 0804710813
Contents
Background: The Sources of War and Peace 1
The Initiation of War 15
International Law and Arms Control 44
Entry into Arms Control Agreements 67
The Impact of Contemporary Arms Control 105
Multilateral Techniques of Enforcing Arms Control 127
SALT and the Control of Bilateral Nuclear Deterrence 148
Regional Arms Control 175
Global Arms Control 200
Conclusions 219
Arms Control by Committee : Managing Negotiations with the Russians
$22.12
Book
This book is essentially a series of case stories of U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms control negotiations, as seen from the American side. It describes the processes of governmental decisionmaking for arms control in Washington, D.C., and the techniques for joint U.S.-Soviet decisionmaking at the negotiating table.
As general counsel of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and member of U.S. delegations to disarmament conferences for eight years, the author was in a unique position to assess the difficulties of fashioning an arms control treaty that could pass muster within the executive branch of the U.S. government, be approved by U.S. allies, be successfully negotiated with the Soviets, and then win the approval of the U.S. Senate. This process will be even more complex now that the United States will face at least four nuclear powers from the former U.S.S.R.
The book has three purposes. The first is to add to the recorded history of the following negotiations: the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, the ABM Treaty of 1972 and its companion SALT Interim Agreements, and the 1987 INF Treaty. The author asks in each case: What did the president and his assistants do (or fail to do) to negotiate a successful agreement?
The second purpose is to use the case book approach, common in law schools and business schools, as a teaching device for those who wish to learn how the American government made decisions about arms control negotiations, how U.S.-Soviet negotiators reached decisions, and what the results of the decisions have been.
The book’s third purpose is to generalize about what works and what does not work in the complex world of arms control negotiations, including information on the impact of negotiating committees and comparisons of the process for negotiating arms limits through action and reaction, without written agreement. The concluding chapter looks to the future: What changes will occur in the arms control process given the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union?
STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND ARMS CONTROL
George Bunn was the first general counsel for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA: 1961-1969), helped negotiate the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and later became U.S. ambassador to the Geneva Disarmament Conference. He has taught at the U.S. Naval War College and the University of Wisconsin Law School, and served as dean of that law school. In his almost twenty years as a Washington lawyer, he worked for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and a major Washington law firm, as well as for ACDA. For the last twenty years, he has been at CISAC. He has a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin and a Bachelor of Laws from Columbia University.
Among Bunn's research on the nuclear non-proliferation regime based upon the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is a book, Arms Control by Committee: Managing Negotiations with the Russians (Stanford University Press, 1992), a negotiator's history of the negotiation of important provisions of the NPT, as well as commentary on other negotiations. He has written many articles relating to the NPT and its regime.
In addition he has written extensively on other aspects of nuclear proliferation and arms control, such as the theory and practice of achieving arms control including non-treaty methods, and the physical protection of nuclear material from theft and sabotage. Recently his articles have appeared in Arms Control Today, The Nonproliferation Review, Science and Global Security, IAEA Bulletin, and Disarmament Diplomacy.
In 2006, he completed (as an author and coeditor) U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy and Nonproliferation: Confronting Today's Threats. The book address the role nuclear weapons should play in today's world, and how the United States can promote international security while safeguarding its own interests.
This is a reproduction edition of a scanned original for Stanford University Press.
