The_Unfinished_20th_Century

The Unfinished 20th Century The Unfinished Twentieth Century's synopsis of the treaties and conventions through which the development of nuclear arsenals has been channeled and contained is elegant, concise, and very informative. Certainly, the subject of this book, written by Jonathan Schell, is a timely one: the slow but sure leakage of nuclear weapons technology out of the exclusive club of nations which once contained it, into the rest of a restless world tired of being shut out in the cold. Schell's chilling analysis of the strategic predicament entailed by the post-Cold War situation is also apt, as is his characterization of the nuclear options now facing a world where technical knowledge flows along increasingly unpredictable lines. Sadly, The Unfinished Twentieth Century presents these basic insights on the diereses of the still-current nuclear threat powerfully and uninhibitedly. Using Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as a key, and Hannah Arendt’s Reflections On the Nature of Evil as a point of departure, Jonathan Schell suggests that the essential story of the twentieth century was the gigantic development of humankind’s capacity for self-destruction — with the rise in many forms of “policies of extermination.” Schell examines the legacy this leaves for the nuclear, century, schell, weapons, 20th, world, abolition, out, history, greater, goal, between, against, 1914, written, within, war, unfinished, twentieth, story, steps, says, proliferation, policy, one, necessary, must, mass, human, global, denuclearization, book, being, begin, began