The majority of narratives about the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War stress that air power did not play a dominant role. The deployment of strong, well-integrated air defenses by Egypt and Syria, that caused heavy losses to the Israeli air force early during that conflict, not only spoiled Israel's prewar planning, but prevented it from providing support for Israeli ground forces too. A cross-examination of interviews with dozens of Egyptian participants in that conflict, contemporary reporting in the media, and also intelligence reports, offers an entirely different picture. Accordingly, for much of that war, the Israelis flew heavy air strikes on Port Said, on the northern entry to the Suez Canal. Furthermore, they repeatedly attacked two major Egyptian air bases in the Nile Delta - el-Mansourah and Tanta - in turn causing some of the biggest air battles of this war. Indeed, in Egypt, the response to these attacks reached the level of legend: the supposed repelling of an Israeli air strike on el-Mansourah, on 14 October 1973, prompted Cairo to declare not only a massive victory, but also that date for the day of its air force. However, the actual reasons for Israeli air strikes on Port Said, el-Mansourah and Tanta remain unclear to this day: there are no Israeli publications offering a sensible explanation, and there are no Egyptian publications explaining the reasoning. Only a cross-examination of additional reporting provides a possible solution: el-Mansourah was also the base of the only Egyptian unit equipped with R-17E ballistic missiles, known as the SS-1 Scud in the West. As of October 1973, these missiles were the only weapon in Egyptian hands capable of reaching central Israel - and that only if fired from the area around Port Said. While apparently unimportant in the overall context, this fact gains immensely in importance considering reports from the US intelligence services about the possible deployment of Soviet nuclear warheads to Egypt in October 1973. Discussing all the available information, strategy, tactics, equipment and related combat operations of both sides, '1973: the First Nuclear War' provides an in-depth insight into the Israeli efforts to prevent the deployment of Egyptian Scud missiles - whether armed with Soviet nuclear warheads or not - in the Port Said area: an effort that dictated a lengthy segment of the application of air power during the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war, and resulted in some of the most spectacular air-to-air and air-to-ground battles of that conflict. Illustrated by over 100 photographs, a dozen maps and 18 color profiles, this book thus offers an entirely new thesis about crucial, but previously unknown factors that determined the flow of the aerial warfare in October 1973.

The author of Origins of the Suez Crisis “mak[es] us look afresh at the events that led to conflict between Israel and its neighbors” (Financial Times). One fateful week in June 1967 redrew the map of the Middle East. Many scholars have documented how the Six-Day War unfolded, but little has been done to explain why the conflict happened at all. Now, historian Guy Laron refutes the widely accepted belief that the war was merely the result of regional friction, revealing the crucial roles played by American and Soviet policies in the face of an encroaching global economic crisis, and restoring Syria’s often overlooked centrality to events leading up to the hostilities. The Six-Day War effectively sowed the seeds for the downfall of Arab nationalism, the growth of Islamic extremism, and the animosity between Jews and Palestinians. In this important new work, Laron’s fresh interdisciplinary perspective and extensive archival research offer a significant reassessment of a conflict—and the trigger-happy generals behind it—that continues to shape the modern world. “Challenging . . . well worth reading.”—Moment “A penetrating study of a conflict that, although brief, helped establish a Middle Eastern template that is operational today . . . The author looks beyond Cold War maneuvering to examine the conflict in other lights . . . Readers with an interest in Middle Eastern geopolitics will find much of value.”—Kirkus Reviews

Hiroshima is the story of six people—a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest—who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. In vivid and indelible prose, Pulitzer Prize–winner John Hersey traces the stories of these half-dozen individuals from 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city, through the hours and days that followed. Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book, Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told, and his account of what he discovered is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.

Reports findings of a December 1973 Jerusalem Symposium assessing the trauma among the world's Jews (and non-Jews) during and following the October war.

Exposes one of the most well-protected political-military secrets of the Cold War.

In this post-apocalyptic novel from Newbery Medal–winning author Robert C. O’Brien, a teen girl struggling to survive in the wake of unimaginable disaster comes across another survivor. Ann Burden is sixteen years old and completely alone. The world as she once knew it is gone, ravaged by a nuclear war that has taken everyone from her. For the past year, she has lived in a remote valley with no evidence of any other survivors. But the smoke from a distant campfire shatters Ann’s solitude. Someone else is still alive and making his way toward the valley. Who is this man? What does he want? Can he be trusted? Both excited and terrified, Ann soon realizes there may be worse things than being the last person on Earth.

Expanded from an article that created a stir in foreign policy circles, this book shows why five central arguments promoting nuclear weapons are, in essence, myths.