This is the gripping, untold story of the doomsday bomb—the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. In 1950, Hungarian-born scientist Leo Szilard made a dramatic announcement on American radio: science was on the verge of creating a doomsday bomb. For the first time in history, mankind realized that he had within his grasp a truly God-like power, the ability to destroy life itself. The shockwave from this statement reverberated across the following decade and beyond. 
If detonated, Szilard's doomsday device—a huge cobalt-clad H-bomb—would pollute the atmosphere with radioactivity and end all life on earth. The scientific creators of such apocalyptic weapons had transformed the laws of nature into instruments of mass destruction and for many people in the Cold War there was little to distinguish real scientists from that “fictional master of megadeath,” Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. Indeed, as PD Smith’s chilling account shows, the dream of the superweapon begins in popular culture. This is a story that cannot be told without the iconic films and fictions that portray our deadly fascination with superweapons, from H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds to Nevil Shute’s On the Beach and Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. 
Although scientists admitted it was possible to build the cobalt bomb, no superpower would admit to having created one. However, it remained a terrifying possibility, striking fear into the hearts of people around the world. The story of the cobalt bomb is an unwritten chapter of the Cold War, but now PD Smith reveals the personalities behind this feared technology and shows how the scientists responsible for the twentieth century’s most terrible weapons grew up in a culture dreaming of superweapons and Wellsian utopias. He argues that, in the end, the doomsday machine became the ultimate symbol of humanity’s deepest fears about the science of destruction.

Doomsday Men: The Real Dr. Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon

Biographies & Memoirs

Smith, P.D.

Community & Culture

St.Martin's Press

Canonical Problems in Scattering and Potential Theory Part II: Acoustic and Electromagnetic Diffraction by Canonical Structures

Science & Math

Vinogradov, S.S.

Vinogradova, E.D.

Mathematics

Chapman and Hall/CRC

Canonical Problems in Scattering and Potential Theory Part 1: Canonical Structures in Potential Theory (Monographs & Surveys in Pure & Applied Mathematics)

Basic Hydraulics

Technology

Butterworth-Heinemann

Modern Marine Electricity and Electronics

Cornell Maritime Pr

Although the analysis of scattering for closed bodies of simple geometric shape is well developed, structures with edges, cavities, or inclusions have seemed, until now, intractable to analytical methods. This two-volume set describes a breakthrough in analytical techniques for accurately determining diffraction from classes of canonical scatterers with comprising edges and other complex cavity features. It is an authoritative account of mathematical developments over the last two decades that provides benchmarks against which solutions obtained by numerical methods can be verified.The first volume, Canonical Structures in Potential Theory, develops the mathematics, solving mixed boundary potential problems for structures with cavities and edges. The second volume, Acoustic and Electromagnetic Diffraction by Canonical Structures, examines the diffraction of acoustic and electromagnetic waves from several classes of open structures with edges or cavities. Together these volumes present an authoritative and unified treatment of potential theory and diffraction-the first complete description quantifying the scattering mechanisms in complex structures.

Canonical Problems in Scattering and Potential Theory Part 1: Canonical Structures in Potential Theory

Although the analysis of scattering for closed bodies of simple geometric shape is well developed, structures with edges, cavities, or inclusions have seemed, until now, intractable to analytical methods. This two-volume set describes a breakthrough in analytical techniques for accurately determining diffraction from classes of canonical scatterers with comprising edges and other complex cavity features. It is an authoritative account of mathematical developments over the last two decades that provides benchmarks against which solutions obtained by numerical methods can be verified. The first volume, Canonical Structures in Potential Theory, develops the mathematics, solving mixed boundary potential problems for structures with cavities and edges. The second volume, Acoustic and Electromagnetic Diffraction by Canonical Structures, examines the diffraction of acoustic and electromagnetic waves from several classes of open structures with edges or cavities. Together these volumes present an authoritative and unified treatment of potential theory and diffraction-the first complete description quantifying the scattering mechanisms in complex structures.

Canonical Problems in Scattering and Potential Theory Part II: Acoustic and Electromagnetic Diffraction by Canonical Str

Canonical Problems in Scattering and Potential Theory - Two volume set

For the first time in the history of our planet, more than half the population-3.3 billion people-is now living in cities. City is the ultimate guidebook to our urban centers-the signature unit of human civilization. With erudite prose and carefully chosen illustrations, this unique work of metatourism explores what cities are and how they work. It covers history, customs and language, districts, transport, money, work, shops and markets, and tourist sites, creating a fantastically detailed portrait of the city through history and into the future.
The urban explorer will revel in essays on downtowns, suburbs, shantytowns and favelas, graffiti, skylines, crime, the theater, street food, sport, eco-cities, and sacred sites, as well as mini essays on the Tower of Babel, flash mobs, ghettos, skateboarding, and SimCity, among many others. Drawing on a vast range of examples from across the world and throughout history, City is extensively illustrated with full-color photographs, maps, and other images. Acclaimed author and independent scholar P. D. Smith explores what it was like to live in the first cities, how they have evolved, and why in the future, cities will play an even greater role in human life.

City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age

Travel

Bloomsbury Press

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Books by Smith, P.D.