Ebook: War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination

Franklin traces the evolution of superweapons from Robert Fulton's eighteenth-century submarine through the strategic bomber, atomic bomb, and Star Wars to a twenty-first century dominated by "weapons of mass destruction," real and imagined. Interweaving culture, science, technology, and history, he shows how and why the American pursuit of the ultimate defensive weapon―guaranteed to end all war and bring universal triumph to American ideals―has led our nation and the world into an epoch of terror and endless war.