“A tour de force of investigative history.” —Steve Coll

The Dead Hand is the suspense-filled story of the people who sought to brake the speeding locomotive of the arms race, then rushed to secure the nuclear and biological weapons left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union—a dangerous legacy that haunts us even today.

The Cold War was an epoch of massive overkill. In the last half of the twentieth century the two superpowers had perfected the science of mass destruction and possessed nuclear weapons with the combined power of a million Hiroshimas. What’s more, a Soviet biological warfare machine was ready to produce bacteria and viruses to sicken and kill millions. In The Dead Hand , a thrilling narrative history drawing on new archives and original research and interviews, David E. Hoffman reveals how presidents, scientists, diplomats, soldiers, and spies confronted the danger and changed the course of history.

The Dead Hand captures the inside story in both the United States and the Soviet Union, giving us an urgent and intimate account of the last decade of the arms race. With access to secret Kremlin documents, Hoffman chronicles Soviet internal deliberations that have long been hidden. He reveals that weapons designers in 1985 laid a massive “Star Wars” program on the desk of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to compete with President Reagan, but Gorbachev refused to build it. He unmasks the cover-up of the Soviet biological weapons program. He tells the exclusive story of one Soviet microbiologist’s quest to build a genetically engineered super-germ—it would cause a mild illness, a deceptive recovery, then a second, fatal attack. And he details the frightening history of the Doomsday Machine, known as the Dead Hand, which would launch a retaliatory nuclear strike if the Soviet leaders were wiped out.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the dangers remained. Soon rickety trains were hauling unsecured nuclear warheads across the Russian steppe; tons of highly-enriched uranium and plutonium lay unguarded in warehouses; and microbiologists and bomb designers were scavenging for food to feed their families.

The Dead Hand offers fresh and startling insights into Reagan and Gorbachev, the two key figures of the end of the Cold War, and draws colorful, unforgettable portraits of many others who struggled, often valiantly, to save the world from the most terrifying weapons known to man.

From the Hardcover edition.

作者戴維•霍夫曼(David E. Hoffman)，《華盛頓郵報》編輯，駐白宮記者，報道過裏根、布什的任期，涵蓋美蘇首腦峰會；蘇聯解體時負責報道國外新聞，後駐耶路撒冷，全程報道“奧斯陸協議”簽訂；1995年到2001年，負責《華盛頓郵報》莫斯科記者站，2002年齣版第一本書《寡頭：新俄羅斯的財富與權力》；返迴華盛頓後，2010年齣版《死亡之手》，從烏剋蘭“生物武器的切爾諾貝利事故”講起，第一本全麵敘述冷戰軍備競賽如何走嚮終結的書，獲美國新聞齣版界的最高榮譽普利策奬，關於蘇聯對抗美國的荒謬曆史，戈爾巴喬夫為本書接受瞭兩次采訪，裏根也接受瞭數次采訪。

譯者張俊，有從事移動互聯網技術新聞翻譯的經驗，擔任美國職棒大聯盟MLB.com中文網頁的兼職翻譯，譯有《足球往事》、《死亡之手》、《抗癌》等書。