Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser
Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Not your typical beach read, unless Nevil Shute’s On The Beach is your go to holiday reading. However, this was a phenomenal book. Well-written, detailed, meticulously researched. I came away from it much more knowledgeable and a great deal more afraid of the weapons we have built since World War II. I grew up during the 70s and 80s, watching more and more missiles being built and the growing movement to stop this madness of nuclear weapons. I worked these issues from the inside in the 2000s, via grassroots and in DC policy circles. I still learned things that made me shudder.
Schlosser paints an amazing history of these weapons from deserts to the sky, from labs to the Oval Office and from military commands to corporate suites. This is not a polemic, it’s not a screed, it’s just damn fine research that let’s the reader draw their own conclusions. Using a 1980 nuclear-tipped missile accident at a Titan II missile silo in Damascus, Arkansas as his frame, he builds an entire house the explores the development, use, planned use, safety, security and maintenance of the US’s most deadly arsenal.
This book deserves six stars, but I am happy to give it GoodReads highest rating of five. 2014 has started out well for me, with two five star books to ring it in. Please read this book!