Critical Mass

In 1990, the world's first war between atomic-armed powers, Pakistan and India, was narrowly averted. Pakistan's and India's quests for the great equalizer, and dozens of similar quests, are recounted in this hair-raising reality check on the status of nuclear proliferation. Burrows and Windrem combine Western intelligence with their own sources to profile the careers of a number of wanna-be J. Robert Oppenheimers. You don't have to be as brilliant as Oppenheimer, you simply have to be resourceful in collecting the 50-year-old "secrets" of producing plutonium and building ballistic missiles. Either stolen or bought from countries such as Germany, the technology flows in a thousand rivulets through porous export controls. As Burrows and Windrem patch together their stories--such as their tale of Greenpeace's attempted purchase (as a PR stunt) of the ultimate loose cannon, a rogue ex-Soviet bomb, and details about the joint Israeli-South African detonation in 1979--they remind us that too many nations have too many rationales to nuclearize their political and military strategies. Updates and expands upon Timmerman's Death Lobby (1991), a study of Iraq's successful exploitation of the world arms bazaar. Gilbert Taylor