Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.

The Great Power Peace has tenuously held since the end of World War II. However, it now appears on shakier ground than ever before. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the official National Security Strategy of the United States declared that “the risk of conflict between major powers is increasing.” Undoubtedly, such a conflict would cause unprecedented human, environmental, and economic damage. As noted by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985—and reiterated by Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin in 2021—“a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” While a clear sentiment, how to ratchet tensions down and sustainably coexist is considerably less clear. Moreover, the need for international cooperation to address issues such as climate change, artificial intelligence, and future pandemics is greater than ever.

Nearly 40 years after the concept of finite deterrence was popularized by the Johnson administration, nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) thinking appears to be in decline. The United States has rejected the notion that threatening population centers with nuclear attacks is a legitimate way to assure deterrence. Most recently, it withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an agreement based on MAD. American opposition to MAD also is reflected in the Bush administration's desire to develop smaller, more accurate nuclear weapons that would reduce the number of innocent civilians killed in a nuclear strike. Still, MAD is influential in a number of ways. First, other countries, like China, have not abandoned the idea that holding their adversaries' cities at risk is necessary to assure their own strategic security. Nor have U.S. and allied security officials and experts fully abandoned the idea. At a minimum, acquiring nuclear weapons is still viewed as being sensible to face off a hostile neighbor that might strike one's own cities. Thus, our diplomats have been warning China that Japan would be under tremendous pressure to go nuclear if North Korea persisted in acquiring a few crude weapons of its own. Similarly, Israeli officials have long argued, without criticism, that they would not be second in acquiring nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Indeed, given that Israelis surrounded by enemies that would not hesitate to destroy its population if they could, Washington finds Israel's retention of a significant nuclear capability totally "understandable."

This book discusses the nuclear dilemma from various countries' points of view: from Japan, Korea, the Middle East, and others. The final chapter proposes a new solution for the nonproliferation treaty review.

In this study of space-based antimissile defenses and their potential military and political consequences, Ben Bova shows how the very technology that has fostered global terror of weapons can also provide the means of warfare suppression. He argues that the technology of computers, satellites, lasers, drone aircraft and "smart" weapons can make warfare of any type impossible, anywhere on earth or in space and that the world can move from the era of Mutual Assured Destruction to an era of Mutual Assured Survival. ISBN 0-395-36405-1 : $15.95.

Factual information about nuclear power, the owners, number and locations of weapons, probable targets, the effects of radiation and their treatment, and self-protection.