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Written by David Hoffman

• Format: Hardcover, 592 pages
 
• Publisher: Doubleday
• On Sale: September 22, 2009
• Price: $35.00
• ISBN: 978-0-385-52437-7 (0-385-52437-4)

about this book

This riveting narrative history of the end of the arms race sheds new light on the frightening last chapters of the Cold War and the legacy of the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that remain a threat today.

During the Cold War, world superpowers amassed nuclear arsenals containing the explosive power of one million Hiroshimas. The Soviet Union secretly plotted to create the “Dead Hand,” a system designed to launch an automatic retaliatory nuclear strike on the United States, and developed a fearsome biological warfare machine. President Ronald Reagan, hoping to awe the Soviets into submission, pushed hard for the creation of space-based missile defenses.

In the first full account of how the arms race finally ended, The Dead Hand provides an unprecedented look at the inner motives and secret decisions of each side. Drawing on top-secret documents from deep inside the Kremlin, memoirs, and interviews in both Russia and the United States, David Hoffman introduces the scientists, soldiers, diplomats, and spies who saw the world sliding toward disaster and tells the gripping story of how Reagan, Gorbachev, and many others struggled to bring the madness to an end. When the Soviet Union dissolved, the danger continued, and the United States began a race against time to keep nuclear and biological weapons out of the hands of terrorists and and rogue states.

“In The Dead Hand, David Hoffman has uncovered some of the Cold War’s most persistent and consequential secrets–plans and systems designed to wage war with weapons of mass destruction, and even to place the prospective end of civilization on a kind of automatic pilot. The book’s revelations are shocking; its narrative is intelligent and gripping. This is a tour de force of investigative history.” –Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars and The Bin Ladens

“An extraordinary and compelling story, beautifully researched, elegantly told, and full of revelations about the superpower arms race in the dying days of the Cold War. The Dead Hand is riveting.” –Rick Atkinson, Pulitzer Prize—winning author of An Army At Dawn

“The Dead Hand is a brilliant work of history, a richly detailed, gripping tale that takes us inside the Cold War arms race as no other book has. Drawing upon extensive interviews and secret documents, David Hoffman reveals never-before-reported aspects of the Soviet biological and nuclear programs. It’s a story so riveting and scary that you feel like you are reading a fictional thriller.”

–Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone


“David Hoffman has written a terrific book about the last years of the US—Soviet arms race. Drawing on new sources of information, he explores in riveting detail the interactions between Moscow and Washington during those dangerous but also hopeful years. This is an absorbing account of the end of a rivalry whose legacy we have not yet fully overcome.”

–David Holloway, author of Stalin and the Bomb


“A stunning feat of research and narrative. Terrifying.”
–John le Carré

“No one is better qualified than David Hoffman to tell the definitive story of the ruinous Cold War arms race. He has interviewed the principal protagonists, unearthed previously undiscovered archives, and tramped across the military-industrial wasteland of the former Soviet Union. He brings his characters to life in a thrilling narrative that contains many lessons for modern-day policy-makers struggling to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. An extraordinary achievement.”
–Michael Dobbs, author of One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War