In this new and expanded edition of an already classic work, H. Bruce Franklin brings the epic story of the superweapon and the American imagination into the ominous twenty-first century, demonstrating its continuing importance both to comprehending our current predicament and to finding ways to escape from it. Sweeping through two centuries of American culture and military history, Franklin traces the evolution of super-weapons from Robert Fulton's eighteenth-century submarine through the strategic bomber, atomic bomb, and Star Wars to a twenty-first century dominated by "weapons of mass destruction," real and imagined. Interweaving culture, science, technology, and history, he shows how and why the American pursuit of the ultimate defensive weapon--guaranteed to end all war and bring universal triumph to American ideals--has led our nation and the world into an epoch of terror and endless war.

H. Bruce Franklin is John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University. He is author of numerous books, including Vietnam and Other American Fantasies (University of Massachusetts Press, 2001.