The Last War — H.G. Wells

"From nearly two hundred centres, and every week added to their number, roared the unquenchable crimson conflagrations of the atomic bombs. The flimsy fabric of the world's credit had vanished, industry was completed disorganised, and every city, every thickly populated area was starving or trembled on the verge of starvation. Most of the capital cities of the world were burning; millions of people had already perished, and over great areas government was at an end." The Last War erupts in Europe, rapidly escalating from bloody trench warfare and vicious aerial duels into a world-consuming, atomic holocaust. Paris is engulfed by an atomic maelstrom, Berlin is an ever-flaming crater, the cold waters of the North Sea roar past Dutch dikes and sweep across the Low Countries. Moscow, Chicago, Tokyo, London, and hundreds of other cities become radioactive wastelands. Governments topple, age-old cultural legacies are destroyed, and the stage is set for a new social and political order. The Last War is H. G. Wells's chilling and prophetic tale of a world gone mad with atomic weapons and of the rebirth of human-kind from the rubble. Written long before the atomic age, Wells's novel is a riveting and intelligent history of the future that discusses for the first time the horrors of the atomic bomb, offering a startling vision of humanity purged by a catastrophic atomic war.