Advocating Weapons, War, and Terrorism

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Technē’s Paradox and Weapons Rhetoric

1. Thomas Malthus’s Population Bomb as a Pre-Text for Technē’s Paradox

2. Preaching Dynamite: August Spies at the Haymarket Trial

3. Humane, All Too Humane: The Chemical-Weapons Advocacy

of Major General Amos A. Fries

4. Toward a Peaceful Bomb: Leo Szilard’s Paradoxical Life

5. Industrial Antipathy: Irreparability and Ted Kaczynski’s IEDs

Conclusion: In the Presence of Weapons and Rhetoric

Notes

Bibliography

Index

“Merging insights from rhetoric, science, and technology studies, Ian Hill analyzes how weapons are simultaneously cast as harbingers of extermination and preservers of peace, revealing novelty and innovation in words about weapons across two centuries. Advocating Weapons, War, and Terrorism is crisply written, thought-provoking, and hauntingly important.”

—Lisa Keränen, author of Scientific Characters: Rhetoric, Politics, and Trust in Breast Cancer Research