I’d be interested in:
people’s thoughts on what books relevant to nuclear risk might be worth reading or worth skipping
links to good summaries/reviews/notes about relevant books
By “books relevant to nuclear risk”, I mean books that:
are focused on nuclear risk specifically, or
are focused on WMDs or great power war more generally, or
have sections relevant to these things
(If you’re not sure whether something counts, please mention it anyway!)
I imagine such a collection could be useful for other people too. I’ll also share in an answer the relevant books and summaries/reviews/notes that I already know of.
I liked Command and Control, The Doomsday Machine, and The Dead Hand, but didn’t get many interesting ideas from The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
Only some parts are relevant to nuclear risk, but Spy Schools by Daniel Golden taught me some interesting stuff about science and espionage.
I also (really) liked The Doomsday Machine and The Dead Hand, and felt that The Making of the Atomic Bomb was a bit of a disappointment. Haven’t read the other books Ryan mentions.
I also recommend American Prometheus, a biography of Oppenheimer (although it focuses too little on the science, relative to the politics). The author has just published another relevant book, Gambling with Armageddon, which I’m looking forward to reading.
Not a book, but the multi-part CNN documentary, Cold War, is excellent. So is The Day after Trinity.
Copied from my post: Notes on “The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution” (Lieber & Press, 2020)
I’ve recently begun researching nuclear risk for Rethink Priorities, but the views in this comment are just my personal views. These views are also pretty tentative, as I’m still at the early stages of learning about these topics.
I’ve read two books focused on nuclear risk:
Command and Control
I’d recommend this for someone who’s pretty interested in nuclear risk.
A lot of this book seemed interesting and useful, but, if I recall correctly, it spent more time on the Damascus explosion than I’d have liked.
Recommended by Rob Wiblin, by Nick Beckstead, and as “Outstanding” by Luke Muehlhauser.
The Doomsday Machine
I’d recommend this for someone who’s pretty interested in nuclear risk.
Has a narrative feel, which made it quite easy to read.
I’m somewhat skeptical of a decent portion of what’s in the book.
E.g., if I recall correctly, Ellsberg seemed to imply that there was scientific consensus that nuclear winter would be very likely in most nuclear exchanges, and would have very severe consequences (e.g., the death of the vast majority of the global population). But my impression—partly based on this Wikipedia article—is that there’s still substantial scientific debate on these points.
But I still think that reading the book was useful.
One of Rob Wiblin’s top 9 book recommendations.
See here for a review from an EA.
I’ve read one book focused on great power war:
Destined for War
I’d recommend this, including for people who are just generally interested in things like war and global catastrophic risk, rather than very specifically interested in nuclear risk.
Recommended by Rob Wiblin.
I’ve read one book focused on trends and drivers of violence more generally, with some parts on/relevance to great power war:
This is of course Better Angels of Our Nature
I think this is in general more useful than the above three books. But it’s very long, and much of it isn’t very focused on great power war or nuclear risk.
Highly recommended by Nick Beckstead and by Luke Muehlhauser, and recommended by Rob Wiblin.
And I’ve read one book focused on existential risks but with ~10 pages on nuclear risk (at the start of chapter 4):
The Precipice
This’d perhaps be my #1 recommended book for most EAs and EA-inclined people in general.
I think the ~10 pages on nuclear war was probably more useful for that topic per page than the above three books. So I might recommend reading those pages before reading the other books.
I list things I’ve written relevant to The Precipice, and some reviews/interviews about The Precipice by others, here.
I’m also aware of but haven’t (yet) read these books focused on nuclear risk, WMDs, and/or great power war:
The Dead Hand
I learned of this via the post Key points from The Dead Hand, David E. Hoffman, which I think is itself worth reading.
Seems to be focused on both nuclear risk and biological weapons.
Atomic Obsession
I learned of this via the post Notes on ‘Atomic Obsession’ (2009), which I think is itself worth reading, as are Max Daniel’s comments on that post.
Seems to be focused on nuclear risk.
After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000
Arden Koehler / 80,000 Hours lists this as a useful book in relation to great power conflict
Feeding Everyone No Matter What
I believe this is mostly focused on interventions to mitigate how bad nuclear winter would be, if it happened.
Some of the books Luke Muehlhauser lists/recommends here
I think that all of the above books are available as audiobooks except Atomic Obsession. But I’d recommend reading The Precipice as an ebook or physical book rather than as an audiobook, as the audiobook doesn’t contain the (huge number of!) interesting footnotes.
(If you want a list of all the EA-relevant books I’ve read since learning about EA, in roughly descending order of how useful I perceive/remember them being to me, that’s available here.)
I would recommend Only the Dead and The Causes of War and the Spread of Peace over Better Angels.
Only the Dead is basically a pretty effective take-down of Pinker’s analysis of trends in interstate war. Some key points are: (i) Pinker focuses on wars between European states, or wars between (typically European) “great powers,” rather than interstate war generally. (ii) Pinker doesn’t adjust for changes in the number of states in his datasets (Europe used to be a lot more fragmented). (iii) Pinker mostly just eyeballs graphs instead of running statistical tests, which is a bad idea when data is small-n and non-normally distributed.
The author instead analyzes the Correlates of War dataset (which is meant to record all interstate wars since 1816) and concludes that there’s been no consistent downward trend over the past 200 years. The rate of interstate war has bounced up down but supposedly is no lower now than it was in the early 19th century. There’s also no evidence of a change in the distribution of the deadliness of wars, in terms of the portion of people who die in each participating state.
I also don’t totally buy the analysis, though, since there are significant issues with the Correlates of War dataset. The dataset probably makes the nineteenth century seem more peaceful than it actually was, because it uses very strict/weird criteria for what counts as a “state” that leads it to exclude nearly all non-European states in the nineteenth century. (Europe was probably the most peaceful part of the world at the time.) The dataset also begins in what was probably the most peaceful period of European history yet, right after more than two decades of constant war. So a more complete and long-run dataset might actually show something different.
The Causes of War and the Spread of Peace mostly agrees with Pinker, and has some similar issues with rigor, but (IMO) is better argued, discusses a wider range of possible explanations for the apparent decline of war, and also has a really interesting treatment of the causes of pre-modern war. I particularly like the emphasis it gives to the Industrial Revolution as a turning point in the history of war.
Hey Ben, thanks for those recommendations! I hadn’t heard of them, and both sound interesting and potentially useful. I’ve now downloaded Only the Dead, and made a note to maybe read The Causes of War and the Spread of Peace after that.
Yes, there is more detail on the nuclear risk in this paper. And this paper on a fault tree model of the chance of nuclear war.
Oh, and I think one chapter of Global Catastrophic Risks is on nuclear risk, but I haven’t read it.
John Lewis Gaddis’ The Cold War: A New History contains a number of useful segments about the nuclear tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., insightful descriptions of policymakers’ thinking during these moments, and a consideration of counterfactual histories in which nuclear weapons might have been deployed. I found it pretty useful in terms of helping me get a picture of what decision-making looks like when the wrong decision means (potentially) the end of civilization.
On the topic of nuclear warfare, I have also read and can recommend The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War by Fred Kaplan. The book provides a deep dive into the development of the US nuclear doctrine over time , covering all administrations across 70 years and outlining in great detail many issues and arguments around nuclear policy.
If you’re also interested in books on biological weapons, I particularly recommend (HT Chris Bakerlee):
1. Bioterror and Biowarfare: A Beginner’s Guide by Malcolm Dando
2. Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs by Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker
On the rise of China (relevant to Great Power Competition), I have found it interesting to read Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World by Michael Schuman. However, I am not too excited to recommend it, because the great majority of the book covers developments in ancient China for which the level of “insights per page” was fairly low for me.
All of the above books are also available as audio books on Audible.
Thanks for your recommendations!
I’ve now listened to The Bomb. I found it interesting and useful, and would likewise recommend it to others. I also wrote some notes on it here.
(And your other recommendations are on my list of books to consider reading in future.)
ETA: I’ve now also listened to Bioterror and Biowarfare, found it useful as well, and posted some takeaways and notes.
The Pentagon’s Brain (history of DARPA) talks about the development, testing and deployment of various military technologies
Another book which should be added to the list is The Great American Gamble: Deterrence Theory and Practice from the Cold War to the 21st Century. This book is notable because it covers the case for deterrence pessimism.
It does this because Dr. Keith Payne, the author, was a student of Herman Kahn’s, who was the other side of the deterrence conversation from Schelling. The central argument is that strictly offensive deterrence is not very credible and so poses an unacceptably high risk; the core difference in policy recommendations is to take deliberate steps to reduce the damage for your side, which they argue simultaneously reduces risk and increases the credibility of deterrence.
As a consequence, I think it speaks very directly to EA concerns about nuclear war.