A Laboratory History of Chemical Warfare Agents Paperback – January 1, 2006

The book arrived in a timely manor and in great condition. I find this book to be fascinating, the very idea that people have created such horrific chemicals is sad and mind boggling. If you are looking for a book on the history of chemical weapons this is not the book. This book is more or less a recipe book, with descriptions in the front for laboratory equipment followed by instructions for each chemical substance.

This book bills itself as an introductory view of chemical agents. It does indeed have introductions to the classes of chemical agents and brief descriptions of individual substances, but (with the exception of directions for manufacture) the information is extremely limited.After a reasonably good introduction to common chemicals and simple laboratory procedure, it gets to the topic at hand. Each section of the book is on a class of agents, and has a brief description of how they work and their uses. Then the common agents are covered individually. There is a little specific history and information about each, a rating of the agent on some sort of 10 point scale that isn't explained or defined in any way, an abstract of the manufacturing process, a long safety warning (which is almost identical for all the chemicals in each section), and then a detailed explanation of the synthesis process.Of the 250+ pages, maybe 50 will be comprehensible to someone without significant background in laboratory chemistry. Much of the remainder is copied again and again with only minor variation from one chemical to the next.The really concerning thing to me is how incredibly badly written it is. The author systematically uses incorrect words even in the general information sections - talking about the "fetal" dose instead of "fatal", and other mistakes that make it clear that the text was never checked over. (I marveled that you could have a "second edition" with this many errors.) The spelling and word errors even appear in the directions for synthesis and the names of the reagents used. The goal of this book seems to be mostly to provide information about the synthesis of these chemicals to the public, and it's so poorly written that it can't even really be trusted to do that.I was extremely disappointed with the whole thing. The layman won't understand most of it, the chemist can't trust it, and if (like me) you know enough to understand the technical aspects but are reading it for entertainment, you'll be more disappointed than either of the former two.

I took an explosive introduction course put on by the FBI and they referenced this book. If you are not a scientist don't waste your money. I guess it could be the greatest book ever written but it is a text book designed for a scientist, I am not so it is useless to me.

Well written and informed on chemical warfare agents! Excellent assortment of chemical compounds from blistering agents to experimental weapons. I would recommend this to a friend.

A Laboratory History of Chemical Warfare Agents was previously titled as a prepetory manual. The book represents an odd assortment of 52 chemicals, many only of a laboratory interest (e.g., thio-sarin). The book provides scant information on the chemicals themselves, with almost complete focus on barely inteligable recipes for laboratory production that is near meaningless to anyone other than a chemist.The book starts with the expected disclaimers that no one should attempt make the substances detailed in the book and proceeds to recommend itself as a learning tool for police and a laboratory guide for legitamate researchers. The problem is the book is not written for investigators and is void of the literature references researchers would expect.What information is provided in regards to chemical warfare (mostly one-liners) is grossly inacurate from both a technical and historical perspective. For example, the Japanese used nerve agents on China in WWII (wrong); mustard gas would not be used by a modern army over other blister agents like the nitrogen mustards (wrong); phosgene is a blood agent (wrong).

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