Here, for the very first time, in an excellent, panoramic portrait by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, may be the definitive, often shocking story from the politics as well as the technology behind the introduction of the hydrogen bomb and the birth of the Frosty War.

Predicated on secret documents in the United States and the former Soviet Union, this monumental work of history discloses how and just why america decided to create the bomb that would dominate world politics for more than forty years.