85 Seconds to Midnight: A Physicist's Warning
Carlo Rovelli
May 2027 · Simon and Schuster
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About this audiobook
A grave warning from one of the world's great scientists
“What drives these pages is the guilty conscience of my professions, theoretical physics. My sole aim is to help avert what seems to me to be the unintended, yet scarcely avoidable, endpoint of the current actions of the governments we have elected: nuclear war.”
The world is rearming and embroiled in endless conflict. The Doomsday Clock has now been set to 85 seconds to midnight, with the risk of nuclear war the highest it has ever been. Why have we failed to learn from the past?
In this urgent book, acclaimed physicist Carlo Rovelli reframes the history of nuclear weapons as a history of fear, errors, and misunderstandings. Beginning with the birth of the atomic age, he revisits the crucial decisions that defined it—why Nazi Germany didn’t build the bomb and why the United States chose to use it—before examining the narrowly averted disasters of the Cold War and the dangerous brinksmanship pushing us closer to disaster today.
As he grapples with the legacy of his scientific forebears, Rovelli spotlights the reckless saber-rattling of our politicians and how vulnerable we are still to nuclear Armageddon. A timely and passionate warning, this searing reckoning with short-sighted politics is essential reading for anyone seeking sanity at our moment of greatest peril.
“What drives these pages is the guilty conscience of my professions, theoretical physics. My sole aim is to help avert what seems to me to be the unintended, yet scarcely avoidable, endpoint of the current actions of the governments we have elected: nuclear war.”
The world is rearming and embroiled in endless conflict. The Doomsday Clock has now been set to 85 seconds to midnight, with the risk of nuclear war the highest it has ever been. Why have we failed to learn from the past?
In this urgent book, acclaimed physicist Carlo Rovelli reframes the history of nuclear weapons as a history of fear, errors, and misunderstandings. Beginning with the birth of the atomic age, he revisits the crucial decisions that defined it—why Nazi Germany didn’t build the bomb and why the United States chose to use it—before examining the narrowly averted disasters of the Cold War and the dangerous brinksmanship pushing us closer to disaster today.
As he grapples with the legacy of his scientific forebears, Rovelli spotlights the reckless saber-rattling of our politicians and how vulnerable we are still to nuclear Armageddon. A timely and passionate warning, this searing reckoning with short-sighted politics is essential reading for anyone seeking sanity at our moment of greatest peril.
A grave warning from one of the world's great scientists
“What drives these pages is the guilty conscience of my professions, theoretical physics. My sole aim is to help avert what seems to me to be the unintended, yet scarcely avoidable, endpoint of the current actions of the governments we hav...
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About the author
Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time. His acclaimed books, including On the Equality of All Things, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, Helgoland, and White Holes, have been number-one bestsellers around the world and translated into more than fifty languages. He has been included among the 100 most influential global thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine and among the world’s top fifty thinkers by Prospect magazine. Rovelli has worked in Italy, the United States, Canada, and France, and currently resides in Spain.
Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time. His acclaimed books, including On the Equality of All Things, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, Helgoland, and White Holes, have been number-one bestsellers around th...
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