Leading military historian, John Hughes-Wilson exposes just how close we have come to genuine nuclear disaster.

Truman evidently understood the terrifying power of atomic weaponry, but no one could have realised its full potential when he ordered the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Those military attacks, along with the disasters at the Fukashima and Chernobyl nuclear reactors, might immediately spring to mind at the mention of nuclear destruction, but the vast majority of the events recorded in this book are entirely unknown to most people. This book records the facts - many of them still shrouded in secrecy - which show a worrying truth: we have teetered precariously on the brink of Armageddon far more frequently than the general public realises.

Since that first and last atomic war in 1945, there have been a terrifying number of nuclear accidents and mishaps, from the careless or accidental to the genuinely intentional and only narrowly averted. Despite the catastrophic nature of any nuclear conflict, we have come to the very borders of such a situation eight times since the 1960s.

Eve of Destruction is a warning from history - recent history. It is a call to sit up and listen, and to take note of the very real danger of nuclear catastrophe. It is a timely and important book because, after all, the future of our planet has to concern us all.