Includes bibliographical references (p. 263-293) and index.

Encounters with the other -- Becoming a weapons scientist -- Nuclear weapons and the other in the western imagination -- Militarism and the media -- Short circuit : watching television with a nuclear weapons scientist -- Hiroshima, the Gulf War, and the disappearing body -- Ideological frames -- Presenting the creation : Dean Acheson and NATO -- Missing the end of the cold war in security studies -- Cultures as strategic hamlets : an anthropologist reads Samuel Huntington -- Nuclear testing -- Nuclear weapons testing as scientific ritual -- The virtual nuclear weapons laboratory in the new world order -- Life around the barbed wire fence -- The death of the authors of death : prestige and creativity among nuclear weapons scientists -- How not to construct an incinerator -- Postscript : tall tales and deceptive discourses : nuclear weapons in George W. Bush's America.