Supplemental Materials

The Challenge of Nuclear Weapons

The Challenge of Nuclear Weapons introduces students to the history of nuclear weapons and the concept of deterrence. It examines arguments for and against nuclear weapons and looks at three challenges facing us today: the leftover arsenals of the Cold War, proliferation, and the threat of nuclear terrorism.

Online Resources from the Choices Program

Scholars Onine resources include interviews with scholars. These short, informative videos can be used in conjunction with student readings or with lessons that accompany each unit.

Nuclear Weapons: What Should Our Policy Be?
is an online lesson plan that engages students in consideration of the options at the center of The Challenge of Nuclear Weapons. It is available from Teaching with the News.

Images (powerpoint)
used during Day 1 activity.

Mapping the Nuclear World
an online lesson plan.

North Korea and Nuclear Weapons
an online lesson plan that explores a range of contrasting policy options on this issue.

Unleashing the Energy of the Atom
includes a reading and lesson plan. It was developed as a science lesson that accompanies Ending the War Against Japan: Science, Morality, and the Atomic Bomb.

Online Survey: Nuclear Weapons: What should do you think?
After study and deliberation on the issue of nuclear weapons policy, we encourage students to make their views known. A report on student views will be developed.

Web Links

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
This site provides extensive resources on the issues surrounding nuclear weapons.

Center for Ameircan Progress: Nuclear & Biological Weapons
This is a source for articles on the current status of weapons of mass destruction (wmd).

Center for Defense Information
This is a source for facts and figures and the latest international news on nuclear weapons and policies.

Center for Nonproliferation Studies
This center provides comprehensive data on nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. There are also tutorials on the NPT, timelines, maps and numerous links.

Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Threats
This is a series of maps reflecting the worldwide proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and their missile delivery systems. It is provided by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Federation of American Scientists
This is a source with numerous links to resources regarding weapons of mass destruction.

National Security Archive
This collection includes declassified documents on many aspects of U.S. nuclear policy and nuclear crises including the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The NewsHour
This is an online NewsHour focus that explores the issues surrounding National Missile Defense.

Race for the Superbomb
This PBS site explores the U.S. program to build a weapon more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Japan.

Conelrad
An extensive resource on the impact of nuclear weapons and the Cold War on popular culture.

Books

Allison, Graham. Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004) 264 pages.

Busch, Nathan E. No End in Sight: The Continuing Menace of Nuclear Proliferation (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004) 489 pages.

Sagan, Scott and Waltz, Kenneth. The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003) 220 pages

Schwartz, Stephen I. (ed.) Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institute Press, 1998) 680 pages.Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 2000) 361 pages.

Related Curriculum Titles

The Challenge of Nuclear Weapons introduces students to the history of nuclear weapons and the concept of deterrence. It examines arguments for and against nuclear weapons and looks at three challenges facing us today: the leftover arsenals of the Cold War, proliferation, and the threat of nuclear terrorism.

  Nuclear
Ending the War Against Japan: Science, Morality, and the Atomic Bomb allows students to examine primary source materials and background information available to U.S. decision-makers in mid-1945 to reconstruct both the scientific odyssey which produced the bomb and the debate within the Truman administration on whether the bomb should have been used against Japan and how.

  Hiroshima
The Cuban Missile Crisis: Considering its Place in Cold War History probes the complex relationship between the United States and Cuba, and examines the crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis draws on groundbreaking research emerging from a series of international conferences.   Cuba

 

NOTE: This is a selected list of resources focused on the topic of the curriculum unit, The Challenge of Nuclear Weapons. Additional resources will be added to this site as they become available.