King of the Cold War crisis film, Dr. Strangelove became a cultural touchstone from the moment of its release in 1964. The duck-and-cover generation saw it as a satire on nuclear issues and Cold War thinking. Subsequent generations, removed from the film’s historical moment, came to view it as a quasi-documentary about an unfathomable secret world. Sean M. Maloney uses Dr. Strangelove and other genre classics like Fail Safe and The Bedford Incident to investigate a curious pop cultural contradiction. Nuclear crisis films repeatedly portrayed the failures of the Cold War’s deterrent system. Yet the system worked. What does this inconsistency tell us about the genre? What does it tell us about the deterrent system, for that matter? Blending film analysis with Cold War history, Maloney looks at how the celluloid crises stack up against reality—or at least as much of reality as we can reconstruct from these films with confidence. The result is a daring intellectual foray that casts new light on Dr. Strangelove, one of the Cold War era’s defining films.

In Learning to Love the Bomb, Sean M. Maloney explores the controversial subject of Canada's acquisition of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Based on newly declassified Canadian and U.S. documents, it examines policy, strategy, operational, and technical matters and weaves these seemingly disparate elements into a compelling story that finally unlocks several Cold War mysteries. For example, while U.S. military forces during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis were focused on the Caribbean Sea and the southeastern United States, Canadian forces assumed responsibility for defending the northern United States, with aircraft armed with nuclear depth charges flying patrols and guarding against missile attack by Soviet submarines. This defensive strategy was a closely guarded secret because it conflicted with Canada's image as a peacekeeper and therefore a more passive member of NATO than its ally to the south. It is revealed here for the first time. The place of nuclear weapons in Canadian history has, until now, been a highly secret and misunderstood field subject to rumor, rhetoric, half-truths, and propaganda. Learning to Love the Bomb reveals the truth about Canada's role as a nuclear power.

Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is one of the most celebrated and significant films ever made. This book traces the movie's origins as a thriller novel through its evolution into a devastating black comedy, to its ultimate reception as an undisputed cinema classic. A wealth of fresh detail is provided on Dr. Strangelove's production, its initial reception and its lasting influence. The book also examines the film within the context of the real-life superpower standoff it satirized and evaluates its place alongside director Kubrick's entire catalog of famous works. Drawn from interviews, biographical research and extensive cultural analysis, this work is an indispensable resource for Kubrick fans, movie buffs and students of Cold War history.

Emergency War Plan examines the theory and practice of American nuclear deterrence and its evolution during the Cold War. Previous examinations of nuclear strategy during this time have, for the most part, categorized American efforts as “massive retaliation” and “mutually assured destruction,” blunt instruments to be casually dismissed in favor of more flexible approaches or summed up in inflammatory and judgmental terms like “MAD.” These descriptors evolved into slogans, and any nuanced discussion of the efficacy of the actual strategies withered due to a variety of political and social factors. Drawing on newly released weapons effects information along with new information about Soviet capabilities as well as risky and covert espionage missions, Emergency War Plan provides a completely new examination of American nuclear deterrence strategy during the first fifteen years of the Cold War, the first such study since the 1980s. Ultimately what emerges is a picture of a gargantuan and potentially devastating enterprise that was understood at the time by the public in only the vaguest terms but that was not as out of control as has been alleged and was more nuanced than previously understood.

In the late 1990s, NATO led the Kosovo Force (KFOR), charged with stabilizing Kosovo and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia after genocide and other atrocities were carried out in the Balkan region. Operation Kinetic is not only a history of the origins and operations of the Kosovo Force but also a history of the vital operations conducted by the Canadian Army units and their allies assigned to KFOR during the crucial early days and months after entry into the province in 1999 and through 2000. Operating alongside American, British, French, Norwegian, Finnish, and Swedish forces, these surveillance and response units were instrumental in preventing violence in numerous areas before it could escalate and draw in the Serbian Army, which could have led to further genocide or war in the region. Sean M. Maloney, a Canadian military historian with extensive field experience in the Balkans, draws on numerous interviews and firsthand accounts of an operation that would later serve as a model in preparing for similar efforts in Afghanistan and provide a blueprint for stabilizing operations around the world.

Emergency War Plan examines the theory and practice of American nuclear deterrence and its evolution during the Cold War. Previous examinations of nuclear strategy during this time have, for the most part, categorized American efforts as "massive retaliation" and "mutually assured destruction," blunt instruments to be casually dismissed in favor of more flexible approaches or summed up in inflammatory and judgmental terms like "MAD." These descriptors evolved into slogans, and any nuanced discussion of the efficacy of the actual strategies withered due to a variety of political and social factors. Drawing on newly released weapons effects information along with new information about Soviet capabilities as well as risky and covert espionage missions, Emergency War Plan provides a completely new examination of American nuclear deterrence strategy during the first fifteen years of the Cold War, the first such study since the 1980s. Ultimately what emerges is a picture of a gargantuan and potentially devastating enterprise that was understood at the time by the public in only the vaguest terms but that was not as out of control as has been alleged and was more nuanced than previously understood.

With rare access to unpublished materials, this volume assesses Dr. Strangelove's narrative accuracy, consulting recently declassified Cold War nuclear-policy documents alongside interviews with Kubrick's collaborators. It focuses on the myths surrounding the film.