Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Book Review: 'Churchill's Bomb' Offers Daft Viewpoint


Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers an interesting review of Churchill's Bomb in the Washington Times.

On occasion, a book crosses my desk with a viewpoint so daft that I find myself checking the dust jacket to reassure myself that it emanated from an ostensibly reliable source, not some crank who lives out under the viaduct.

Such was my reaction as I turned through the pages of  "Churchill's  Bomb,” whose author, Graham Farmelo is billed as a senior research fellow at the Science museum in London and an adjunct professor at a British university.

The core of Mr. Farmelo's argument is that Winston Churchill erred grievously when he botched a chance for the British to seize supremacy in the development of nuclear energy in the 1940s, thus ceding leadership to the United States. Better had the Brits kept atomic secrets to themselves, he writes, and developed the bomb on their own. Had he heeded the warnings of the relevant British scientists both during and after the development of the bomb, “Churchill may have still been able to avert the frightening nuclear arms race that America precipitated [sic] during the Cold War.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/18/book-review-churchills-bomb/

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