How did a fluke experiment in 1998, involving a used dental X-ray machine and a dubious sample of radioactive material, become the Pentagons pet weapons project? It had been rejected by one of the Pentagons most important advisory groups, but the Pentagon found an eccentric scientist who believed that a super isomer bomb could be built, and deliver the punch of a two-kiloton nuke packaged in a hand grenade. Ideologues at the Pentagon claimed that the Russians were in the process of building one of their own, and that the weapon was essential to the Pentagons arsenal. Imaginary Weapons tells the story of the battle that ensued, pitting the nations leading nuclear physicists against the Pentagons top brass, and the military against nuclear arms control advocates, as funds and experiments for the isomer weapon miraculously reappeared even after the project had been shelved numerous times, even by Congress. This book also illuminates the dangerous trend that the Bush administration continues to follow of putting politics before science. The bomb is imaginary, and the only explosion produced by the isomer weapon will leave a hole in the nations budget and a fallout of the nations best and brightest scientists.