Martin J. Sherwin, left, speaks as Kai Bird stands by after Sherwin and Bird’s “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” won the prize for biography at the NBCC ...

Martin J. Sherwin, Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1945–1962 (New York: Knopf, 2020), pp. 5, 28; Serhii Plokhy, Nuclear Folly: A History of the ...