Introduction: The End of the Imagination / Arundhati Roy -- The Top Story of the Century -- Bloc Rivalry and the High Noon of Nuclearism -- Hesitant and New: Disarmament Momentum after the Cold War -- The Road to Pokharan II and Chagai -- "Safe" Tests and Popular Doubts -- The Evolution of India's Nuclear Policy -- South Asia in the Nuclear Trap: The Causes and Consequences of India and Pakistan Going Nuclear -- No Peace in the "Land of the Buddha"? -- Mine is Bigger than Yours: The Indian and Pakistani Test Yields -- Indefensible Arms: The Ethics of War and Nuclear Weapons -- Bombing Bombay: More Devastating than Hiroshima? -- Toys for Boys: How Nuclearism Works Against Women -- An Unaffordable Arsenal: The Cost of a "Credible Minimal Deterrent" -- The Deterrence Delusion: Why Nuclear Weapons Don't Generate Security -- Ramshackle Deterrence -- From Abstinence, to Ambiguity, to the Nuclear Blasts -- Challenges to the Global Nuclear Order: Whose Crisis? Whose Dilemma? -- Where Are the Missiles? -- The Struggle for Nuclear Weapons Abolition -- Marxists and the Bomb.

The recent Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests brought nuclear proliferation and the terrible threat of nuclear war back to the world's center stage. The south Asian nuclear moves have raised regional tensions, transformed Kashmir into a potentially nuclear flashpoint, increased the poverty of already devastated populations, fueled a conventional and possibly nuclear arms race far beyond the borders of the two countries, and vastly distorted definitions of international status and influence. On the global level, the newest entries into the restricted club of admitted nuclear-capable nations have rendered obsolete the post-World War II nuclear status quo.