Arms Control

Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible

A Washington Post Best Book Of The Year

"A riveting investigation of the world's most notorious weapons dealer, Viktor Bout, whose post-Cold War arms network has stoked violence worldwide."
—THE WASHINGTON POST

"A page-turner that digs deep into the amazing, murky story of Viktor Bout. Farah and Braun have exposed the inner workings of one of the world's most secretive businesses—the international arms trade."
—Peter Bergen, author of The Osama bin Laden I Know

"Braun and Farah have crafted an impressive and damning dossier on this mysterious figure, a raw capitalist at work in an anarchical world."
—Mark Bowden, author of Guests of the Ayatollah

"Viktor Bout is like Osama bin Laden: a major target of U.S. intelligence officials who time and again gets away. Farah and Braun have skillfully documented how this notorious arms dealer has stoked violence around the world and thwarted international sanctions. . . . A truly impressive piece of investigative reporting."
—Michael Isikoff, coauthor of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War

Respected journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun tell the incredible story of Viktor Bout, the Russian weapons supplier whose global network has changed the way modern warfare is fought. Bout's vast enterprise of guns, planes, and money has fueled internecine slaughter in Africa and aided both militant Islamic fanatics in Afghanistan and the American military in Iraq. Combining spy thrills with crucial insights on the shortcomings of a U.S. foreign policy that fails to confront the lucrative and lethal arms trade that erodes global security, they show how Bout has successfully skirted every attempt to undo his enterprise and flourishes, while the world's premier intelligence services have largely given up the chase.

More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws

Multiple regression analyses are rarely the subject of heated public debate or 225-page books for laypeople. But John R. Lott, Jr.'s study in the January 1997 Journal of Legal Studies showing that concealed-carry weapons permits reduced the crime rate set off a firestorm. The updated study, together with illustrative anecdotes and a short description of the political and academic response to the study, as well as responses to the responses, makes up Lott's informative More Guns, Less Crime.

In retrospect, it perhaps should not have been surprising that increasing the number of civilians with guns would reduce crime rates. The possibility of armed victims reduces the expected benefits and increases the expected costs of criminal activity. And, at the margin at least, people respond to changes in costs, even for crime, as Nobel-Prize winning economist [TAG]Gary Becker showed long ago. Allusions to the preferences of criminals for unarmed victims have seeped into popular culture; Ringo, a British thug in Pulp Fiction, noted off-handedly why he avoided certain targets: "Bars, liquor stores, gas stations, you get your head blown off stickin' up one of them."

But Lott's actual quantification of this, in the largest and most comprehensive study of the effects of gun control to date, a study well-detailed in the book, provoked a number of attacks, ranging from the amateurish to the subtly misleading, desperate to discredit him. Lott takes the time to refute each argument; it's almost touching the way he footnotes each time he telephones an attacker who eventually hangs up on him without substantiating any of their claims.

Lott loses a little focus when he leaves his firm quantitative base; as an economist, he should know that the low number of rejected background checks under the Brady Bill doesn't demonstrate anything by itself, because some people may have been deterred from even undergoing the background check in the first place, but he attacks the bill on this ground anyway. But the conclusions that are backed by evidence--that concealed-weapons permits reduce crime, and do so at a lower cost to society than increasing the number of police or prisons--are important ones that should be considered by policymakers. --Ted Frank

The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World's Most Dangerous Secrets...And How We Could Have Stopped Him

The world has entered a second nuclear age. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation is on the rise. Should such an assault occur, there is a strong likelihood that the trail of devastation will lead back to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani father of the Islamic bomb and the mastermind behind a vast clandestine enterprise that has sold nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. Khan's loose-knit organization was and still may be a nuclear Wal-Mart, selling weapons blueprints, parts, and the expertise to assemble the works into a do-it-yourself bomb kit. Amazingly, American authorities could have halted his operation, but they chose instead to watch and wait. Khan proved that the international safeguards the world relied on no longer worked.

Journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins tell this alarming tale of international intrigue through the eyes of the European and American officials who suspected Khan, tracked him, and ultimately shut him down, but only after the nuclear genie was long out of the bottle.

Haarp: The Ultimate Weapon of the Conspiracy (The Mind-Control Conspiracy Series)

Workbench Silencers: The Art Of Improvised Designs (Silencers)

Here is a slew of new and interesting improvised silencer designs featuring innovative couplings plus variations on aluminum cans, oil filters, PVC pipe, plumbing devices, water sprinkler pieces and other unique materials. Warning: It is illegal to possess or make firearm silencers without BATF registration. For academic study only.

The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong

Slicing through the emotional--but factually wrong--arguments of gun control advocates this book busts a number of myths, demonstrating with hard statistical data and riveting anecdotes.

Weather Warfare

Mother Nature Has Been Drafted! Floods, Droughts, Tsunamis, Hurricanes & Volcanic Eruptions -- Weapons of the Future "Or Today? Weather modification in the form of cloud seeding to increase snow packs in the Sierras or hail suppression over Kansas is now an everyday affair. Underground nuclear tests in Nevada have set off earthquakes. A Russian company has been offering to sell typhoons (hurricanes) on demand since the 1990s, and scientists have been searching for ways to move hurricanes for over fifty years. In the same amount of time we went from the Wright Brothers to Neil Armstrong, hundreds of environmental and weather modifying technologies have been patented in the US alone and hundreds more are being developed in civilian, academic, military and quasi-military laboratories around the world at this moment! This book lays bare the grim facts of who is doing it and why. * up-dates recent developments at HAARP, including its possible connection to the crash of the Space Shuttle Columbia * did HAARP play a role in Hurricane Katrina? Smith puts these technologies into context by examining the geopolitical conflicts that are driving their development from Globalization and the rise of Neo-Con Neo-Fascism to terrorism and "Peak Oil."

... [terrorists]... are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves? -- US Secretary of Defense William Cohen, April, 1997

Missile Contagion: Cruise Missile Proliferation and the Threat to International Security

Most books on missile proliferation focus on the spread of ballistic missiles or cruise missiles, not both. Gormley's work, however, explains why cruise missiles are beginning to spread widely, but does so by explaining their spread in the context of ballistic missile proliferation. It therefore treats both ballistic and cruise missile proliferation as related phenomenon. This work also focuses evenhandedly on both nonproliferation and defense policy (including missile defenses and counterforce doctrines) to fashion a set of integrated strategies for dealing with ballistic and cruise missile proliferation. Signs of missile contagion abound. In this study, Gormley argues that a series of rapid and surprising developments since 2005 suggest that the proliferation of missiles capable of delivering either weapons of mass destruction or highly accurate conventional payloads is approaching a critical threshold. The surprising fact is that land-attack cruise missiles, not ballistic missiles, constitute the primary problem. Flying under the radar, both literally and figuratively, land-attack cruise missiles add a dangerous new dimension to protecting U.S. security interests and preventing regional military instability. Gormley asserts that cruise missiles are not destined to supplant ballistic missiles; rather, they are likely to join them, because when both are employed together, they could severely test even the best missile defenses. Worse yet, Gormley argues, land-attack cruise missiles are increasingly being linked to preemptive strike doctrines, which are fueling regional arms races and crisis instability. This work explains why an epidemic of cruise missile proliferation, long forecasted by analysts, has only recently begun to occur. After first assessing the state of ballistic missile proliferation, Gormley explores the role of three factors in shaping the spread of cruise missiles. These include specialized knowledge needed for missile development; narrative messages about reasons for acquiring cruise missiles; and norms of state behavior about missile nonproliferation policy and defense doctrine. This book then addresses the policy adjustments needed to stanch the spread of cruise missiles in the first place, or, barring that, cope militarily with a more demanding missile threat consisting of both cruise and ballistic missiles.

Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons

Since their inception, nuclear weapons have multiplied at an alarming rate, leaving everyone from policymakers to concerned citizens wondering what it will take to slow, stop, or even reverse their spread. With clarity and expertise, Joseph Cirincione presents an even-handed look at the history of nuclear proliferation and an optimistic vision of its future, providing a comprehensive survey of the wide range of critical perspectives.

Cirincione begins with the first atomic discoveries of the 1930s and covers the history of their growth all the way to current crisis with Iran. He unravels the science, strategy, and politics that have fueled the development of nuclear stockpiles and increased the chance of a nuclear terrorist attack. He also explains why many nations choose not to pursue nuclear weapons and pulls from this the outlines of a solution to the world's proliferation problem: a balance of force and diplomacy, enforcement and engagement that yields a steady decrease in these deadly arsenals.

Though nuclear weapons have not been used in war since August 1945, there is no guarantee this good fortune will continue. A unique blend of history, theory, and security analysis, Bomb Scare is an engaging text that not only supplies the general reader and student with a clear understanding of this issue but also provides a set of tools policymakers and scholars can use to prevent the cataclysmic consequences of another nuclear attack.

Capitalism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

This Introduction explores the origins of capitalism and questions whether it did indeed originate in Europe. It examines a distinctive stage in the development of capitalism that began in the 1980s, in order to understand where we are now and how capitalism has evolved since. The book
discusses the crisis tendencies of capitalism--including the S.E. Asian banking crisis, the collapse of the Russian economy, and the 1997-1998 global financial crisis--asking whether capitalism is doomed to fail. In the end, the author ruminates on a possible alternative to capitalism, discussing
socialism, communal and cooperative experiments, and alternatives proposed by environmentalists.