About the Book: On 16 July 1945, the atomic age began with the explosion of the first bomb and the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer: “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.” In The Nuclear Age, historian Serhii Plokhy traces the race for nuclear arms—from the split atom in 1917 and the Cold War arms buildup to today’s collapse of treaties, state re-arming and non-state threats. He asks: what lessons from the first nuclear era can help avert the next?