- The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1987), winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and National Book Award
- Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (1995)
- Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race (2007)
- Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War and the World it Made (2015)
- Energy: A Human History (2019)
Fiction
- A Hole in the World (1990)
- Twilight of the Bombs (2017)