Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld [Hardcover]

Sharon Weinberger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 25, 2006

How did a fluke experiment in 1998, involving a used dental X-ray machine and a dubious sample of radioactive material, become the Pentagon’s pet weapons project? It had been rejected by one of the Pentagon’s most important advisory groups, but the Pentagon found an eccentric scientist who believed that a super “isomer” bomb could be built, and deliver the punch of a two-kiloton nuke packaged in a hand grenade. Ideologues at the Pentagon claimed that the Russians were in the process of building one of their own, and that the weapon was essential to the Pentagon’s arsenal.

Imaginary Weapons tells the story of the battle that ensued, pitting the nation’s leading nuclear physicists against the Pentagon’s top brass, and the military against nuclear arms control advocates, as funds and experiments for the “isomer weapon” miraculously reappeared even after the project had been shelved numerous times, even by Congress.

This book also illuminates the dangerous trend that the Bush administration continues to follow of putting politics before science. The bomb is imaginary, and the only explosion produced by the “isomer weapon” will leave a hole in the nation’s budget and a fallout of the nation’s best and brightest scientists.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Pentagon's fascination with fringe science is old news, writes veteran defense reporter Weinberger in this incisive study, but the Bush administration has pushed it to new levels of wackiness. After reviewing our government's pursuit of antimatter weapons, psychics and telepathy, she focuses on a "nuclear hand grenade" that may cost billions and seems certain to fail. Before the War on Terror and the avalanche of government money for advanced new weapons, few paid attention to physicists who said they could harness the energy of unstable atomic nuclei, or "isomers," through a wildly expensive process involving atomic reactors. But in recent years, a group of fringe scientists aided by defense industry insiders has convinced the Pentagon that America's post-9/11 survival depends on developing an isomer bomb. While proponents compare it to the Manhattan Project, opponents point out that independent researchers have not been able to duplicate the results attained by isomer enthusiasts, and that many assumptions behind the bomb contradict the laws of physics. Though Congress canceled isomer bomb development in 2004, the Department of Energy found $5 million to continue the research. (July 1)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

That the Pentagon wastes billions of dollars on outmoded or ineffective weaponry has been old news for decades, but Weinberger offers a new dimension. Editor of the magazine Defense Technology International, Weinberger has previously worked for the U.S. State Department and the Systems Planning Corporation, and she uses her insider's understanding to expose the flaws in weapons design through a case study built around a device called a hafnium bomb. The idea for a handheld weapon with the explosive power of a nuclear bomb begins in the mind of a pseudoscientist who makes more headway with the Pentagon than seems logical. "All it took," Weinberger notes, "was a used dental X-ray, a few die-hard supporters, some farfetched claims of a new arms race, and the Pentagon thought it was on its way to the next superbomb." The episode seems outlandish enough to be satire, but alas, it's true to life. Weinberger injects humor into the saga, but comedy pales in light of the potentially deadly nature of the proposed weapon. Steve Weinberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: Nation Books (April 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560258497
• ISBN-13: 978-1560258490
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,165,588 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Success of Marketing, But Little Else, July 28, 2006

By 

Russian Student "incoherent1" (FL, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld (Hardcover)

I bought the book "Imaginary Weapons" hoping to have an entertaining read on some of the less plausible ideas and concepts that are thrown around the "Pentagon's Scientific Underworld." I'm very interested in both science and technology, so I was also interested to hear the "science" behind these prospective weapons and the case studies on them.

Sadly, the book matched neither the title nor my expectations. In reality, the book focuses exclusively on "isomer weapons" and the "hafnium bomb," or, I should say, the in-squabbling that takes place between fringe scientists over these ideas. The book is less of a study, less of a technological focus and more of a "he said, she said" soap opera of the scientific world, with a narrow focus to those scientists in the isomer/hafnium field.

If you're interested in the history of isomer/halfium research, then this may be a good read, otherwise, I advise you look elsewhere.

67 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Trivial Pursuit, August 1, 2006

By 

Howard (Tampa, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld (Hardcover)

Imaginary Weapons by Sharon Weinberger is an extremely disappointing book. Promos claimed it would be a broad investigation of the unconventional technologies evaluated by the DOD. What it turns out to be is a pitifully narrow view of a single trivial issue about whether the energy stored in a peculiar isomer form in Hafnium can be useful or not. Having no technical competence, the author seems only able to spend the 300 pages producing an immature view of hypothetical squabbling between characters portrayed in a totally unconvincing style. By the end of the book it is clear that the analysis reported in the Product Forum got it right. Imaginary Weapons is fiction concocted from interviews with sources that have no credibility or corroboration. What a waste of $10.10!

43 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't waste your time., November 3, 2006

By 

D. Muhr "dave9621" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld (Hardcover)

I saw the author plugging the book on The Daily Show and she was quite engaging and the book sounded like a good read. But after reading the book I can't recommend it. It was very dry and reminded me of a college term paper that was very much padded for length. There is one central story and it's beaten to death over and over. This book would have made a very interesting magazine article, no doubt about that, but as a book there just wasn't enough of a story. And one other thing...the book is loaded with TYPOS!! Very distracting...I'd say I noticed six or seven typos and generally you shouldn't find ANY.