Sam Cohen, Father of the Neutron Bomb

“ ‘[Expletive Deleted] You, Mr. President’: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb”

This third edition (2006) supersedes the previously printed (2000) version (and the earlier 2005 second edition). It incorporates a new overview and postscript chapter by Charles Platt called “The Profits of Fear”. It also has a much more provocative new title. (I want to be on record as having urged Sam to consider a more moderate change of title.) This is the controversial and myth-shattering book on national security that was turned down by every conventional publisher and agent that I contacted (despite Sam’s previously successfully published books). [(PDF) (about 1.1 MB).] The second (now third) edition explicitly gives you permission to put it on your web site, or to print and sell full and unaltered copies of it, among other options. See the copyright page for details. Among other changes Sam requested or otherwise approved of, the second (now third) edition has all the original expletives fully restored. I’ve also fixed a bunch of typos and misspellings and updated the bibliography.

You might also be interested in Sam Cohen’s 1998 article, “Needed: A Real ABM Defense”.

Some publishing history: I converted the raw manuscript file (produced by Sam’s daughter) into standard book format, did the subsequent technical editing work, created the index, and made arrangements for print-on-demand publishing. (Please don’t hold my amateur efforts against Sam.) The printed version of this book has now been available for many years, but soon after a (non-exclusive) publishing agreement was made, the greedy publisher quickly and drastically raised prices way above what many people were willing to pay. At the same time, to drive sales through their own web site, they reportedly lowered standard discounts to other outlets, so Amazon.com dropped Shame. Moreover, Amazon.com only showed the earlier planned World Scientific version of Shame (which the publisher inexplicably cancelled, while I was in the midst of making initially-requested editorial changes), which of course was marked as unavailable. At long last, years later, Amazon.com now carries Shame again. To their credit, BarnesAndNoble.com has carried it for the duration. In any case, with Sam’s permission, I’ve put the new third edition of Shame online.

After Shame was published, Sam Cohen’s daughter got another interesting book of Sam’s similarly published. It’s called “Automat: Jess Marcum, Gambling Genius of The Century”. Jess was one of Sam’s many brilliant and peculiar co-workers at RAND.