This lecture is presented as part of The Albert Pick Jr. International Relations Project at the Chicago Public Library, through a grant to the Chicago Public Library Foundation. Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Atomic Bomb, discusses and signs his new book, The Twilight of the Bombs. This culminating volume in Richard Rhodes’s monumental history of nuclear weapons offers the first comprehensive narrative of the challenges faced in a post–Cold War age. The past twenty years have transformed our relationship with nuclear weapons drastically. With extraordinary depth of knowledge, Rhodes makes clear how the five original nuclear powers—Russia, Great Britain, France, China, and especially the United States—have struggled with new realities. Powerful and persuasive, The Twilight of the Bombs is an essential work of contemporary history.

Recorded Wednesday, September 15, 2011 at the Harold Washington Library Center.