You and the Atomic Bomb

Published a mere two and a half months after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Orwell’s “You and the Atomic Bomb” is notable as one of the first efforts to divine the social and political implications of a new weapon of previously unimaginable power. Its fame arises from Orwell’s coinage of a new term for the permanent standoff the bomb would foster between two great powers, the United States and the Soviet Union: the “cold war.”