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The Warhead by Jeffrey E. Stern

The Warhead

The Quest to Build the Perfect Weapon in the Age of Modern Warfare

Jeffrey E. Stern

Penguin Publishing Group · Print & ebook · January 20, 2026

An Apple Best Book of the Month From award-winning journalist and coauthor of The 15:17 to Paris, an affecting human history of the first self-steering bomb Paveway, the first "smart" bomb, was created to be a more precise and ostensibly humane weapon, reducing civilian casualties.

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Genres
Weapons Through History, Technology, Military Aviation
Published
Penguin Publishing Group, January 20, 2026

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About this book

An Apple Best Book of the Month From award-winning journalist and coauthor of The 15:17 to Paris, an affecting human history of the first self-steering bomb Paveway, the first "smart" bomb, was created to be a more precise and ostensibly humane weapon, reducing civilian casualties. The true impact of the bomb, however, is ever more complex and unpredictable. In The Warhead, Jeffrey Stern tells the story of Paveway through the lives of seven interconnected stories.

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They're stories of Nazis, Kennedys, Operation Paperclip, and Walt Disney; of the Apollo mission and the space shuttle Challenger disaster. Paveway inadvertently sparked the personal computing revolution and the adoption of GPS, it ushered in the era of modern warfare, and it shows up at critical historical moments throughout the last half century. At once revelatory and deeply human, The Warhead unearths the complicated truth behind one of the most significant weapons of our time.

Where it sits

Weapons Through History81%
Technology41%
Military Aviation31%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Weapons Through History
  • 20th-Century America
  • Technology
Authors
Jeffrey E. Stern
Publisher
Penguin Publishing Group
Published
January 20, 2026
Format
Print & ebook
Reading lane
Weapons Through History