Photographs of historian Zachary Schrag and his father Philip Schrag in front of a Nuclear War plan background

Two Generations of Nuclear Hopes and Nuclear Fears

A conversation with historian Zachary Schrag and his father Philip Schrag about their multi-generational encounters with nuclear threats.
Civil Defense warning.

The Occasion Instant, 1961

What can be learned from how people responded to false alarms about nuclear war in the late 1950s?
Oppenheimer movie poster.

Fact, Fiction, and the Father of the Bomb

On Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.”

Counting the Dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki

How many people really died because of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings? It’s complicated. There are at least two credible answers.
People looking at the Fat Man bomb covered with a tarp

What Journalists Should Know About the Atomic Bombings

As we approach the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings, we're going to see a lot of journalistic takes on them — many of them totally wrong.

John Wheeler’s H-bomb Blues

In 1953, as a political battle raged over the US’s nuclear future, the physicist lost a classified document on an overnight train from Philadelphia to DC.

A 'Purely Military' Target? Truman’s Changing Language about Hiroshima

A set of speech drafts suggests that Truman may not have fully understood the implications of dropping an atomic bomb on the city.

The Curious Death of Oppenheimer’s Mistress

Who killed J. Robert Oppenheimer's Communist lover?

Why Nagasaki?

Why was a second bomb used against Japan, so soon after Hiroshima? A review of several theories.