85 Seconds to Midnight by Carlo Rovelli

A warning to humankind from one of the world’s greatest physicists

‘What drives these pages is the guilty conscience of my profession, theoretical physics. My sole aim is to help avert what seems to me to be the unintended, yet scarcely avoidable, end point of the current politics of the governments we have elected- nuclear war.’

The world is re-arming and embroiled in endless wars. The Doomsday Clock has now been set to 85 seconds to midnight, with the risk of nuclear war the highest it has ever been. We think we understand the history of the nuclear bomb, but it is clear we have failed to learn from the past.

In this urgent book, acclaimed physicist Carlo Rovelli reframes the story of nuclear weapons- from how the atomic bomb came to be to why Germany didn’t build it and why the US used it to the narrowly averted atomic disasters of the Cold War to the political brinkmanship careening out of control today.
As he grapples with the legacy of his scientific forebears, Rovelli spotlights the true nature of the decisions being made by leaders around the world today. A timely and ardent warning, this searing indictment of short-sighted politics is essential reading for anyone seeking sanity at a moment of greatest peril.

About the Author: Carlo Rovelli is an internationally acclaimed writer whose books, including Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, Helgoland and White Holes, have been number one bestsellers around the world and translated into over forty languages. As a theoretical physicist, he has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time and he is currently directing the quantum gravity research group of the Centre de physique theorique in Marseille, France.

23 Jun 2026
 

85 Seconds to Midnight: A Physicist’s Argument Against Rearmament by Carlo Rovelli ISBN 9781837315574