Ep 1: Martin Sherwin, Gambling with Armageddon

Welcome to the Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs! 

In this first episode, world-renowned economist and Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Martin J. Sherwin about his book Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which explores the origins, scope, and consequences of the evolving place of nuclear weapons in the post-World War II world.

Professors Sachs and Sherwin discuss the choices of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations over the course of the nuclear arms race, Khrushchev’s and Kennedy’s positions during the Bay of Pigs debacle, and the often-overlooked role of US Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson—and luck—in preventing a nuclear world war.

The Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs is brought to you by the SDG Academy, the flagship education initiative of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Learn more and get involved at bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org.

Footnotes:

• Biography of John F. Kennedy

• President John F. Kennedy, Address before the UN General Assembly, 25 Sep. 1961

• Biography of Nikita Khrushchev

• American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

• Biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer

• Biography of Frank Oppenheimer

• The Day After Trinity (1981)

• Biography of Harry S. Truman

• Biography of James F. Byrnes

• Biography of Joseph Stalin

• Biography of Dwight Eisenhower

• President Dwight Eisenhower, Address before the UN General Assembly, 8 Dec. 1953

• Missives between Khrushchev and Kennedy

• Executive Committee Meeting of the National Security Council on the Cuban Missile Crisis

• Biography of Adlai Stevenson II

• Biography of U Thant

• Biography of Robert F. Kennedy

• Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

• Biography of Curtis LeMay

• Biography of Henry Stimson

• Memo of Henry Stimson to President Truman, 25 Apr. 1945

• UN Treaty on the Prohibition of the Nuclear Weapons