Recommended
Periodically we will write reviews or ask friends of RealistRevolt to write reviews of books that are useful or important for thinking about how to eliminate nuclear weapons. I hope this is helpful.
Thirteen Days
Thirteen Days is exciting, suspenseful, human, clearly written, and brief. It is a first-hand account of the most dangerous moment the world has ever faced (so far)--the Cuban Missile Crisis. You sit at the table with the president's advisors as they debate. You meet alone with the president and feel his anger, frustration, and concern. There are personal moments of intense emotion and clear-eyed descriptions of the enormous danger. Watching Kennedy and his brother, the president, try to negotiate the tightrope walk of the Cuban Missile Crisis is terrifying, fascinating, and gives you a chance to reflect on some of the most important issues of that time or any time.
Robert Kennedy, Thirteen Days, first published in 1969. Must read.
Weapons and hope
Dyson is a physicist who writes like a poet. Every word reverberates with meaning, like a struck bell. His Weapons and Hope covers a great deal of ground. And he is wise. Here is a quote I used as the front piece to Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons: “I am convinced that in order to avoid nuclear war it is not sufficient to be afraid of it. It is necessary to be afraid, but it is equally necessary to understand. And the first step in understanding is to recognize that the problem of nuclear war is basically not technical but human and historical. If we are to avoid destruction we must first of all understand the human and historical context out of which destruction arises.” Dyson is a master storyteller, an art that I have studied in his writing, but not yet mastered.
Freeman Dyson, Weapons and Hope, first published in 1984. Highly recommended.
The Causes of War
Let's be frank. We don't understand the causes of war. But Blainey, an imaginative, clear-headed thinker who doesn't hesitate to try new approaches, has put forward one of the best explanations we have so far. Blainey argues that wars spring from largely emotional causes, and the cause he thinks most often is to blame is optimism. Foolish optimism leads people to overestimate their chances and ignore realities. He also presents a very persuasive comparison of mistakes of perception with market forces. Blainey is an Australian economist whose original ideas about large subjects ultimate earned him an Order of Australia medal in 2000. He has an interesting mind.
Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War, first published in 1974. Highly recommended.
One Minute to Midnight
Michael Dobbs has unearthed new and frightening details about the Cuban Missile Crisis. He tells the story in depth and even experienced historians of the subject will find new and shocking details. For example, the United States did not know, as they were discussing invading Cuba, that the Soviets had already transferred tactical nuclear weapons to Soviet units on the island and authority to use those weapons had been delegated to local Soviet commanders. There is a particularly vivid account of a Soviet submarine captain, maddened by U.S. depth charge attacks, out of contact with Moscow, struggling with malfunctions and incredible heat conditions, who angrily ordered that the nuclear-armed torpedo on his submarine be fired at U.S. warships. (Eventually cooler heads prevailed.) But this book will give you a full and accurate picture of just how close the United States and Russia came to fighting a nuclear war and how clearly luck played a considerable role in preventing war.
Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War, first published in 2008.
The Rise of American Air Power
Sherry traces the rise of American air power and the thinking that went along with it. He is an excellent historian and the story is important for us because of the close parallels between theories of conventional air power and many of the ideas that eventually became gospel for thinking about nuclear weapons. For example, the lessons drawn from Chapter Six, "The Dynamics of Escalation" are applicable to nuclear weapons. He explores the interplay between emotion and technology in Chapter Eight, "The Sources of Technological Fanaticism." It is an excellent work.
Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power, first published in 1987. Winner of the Bancroft Prize. Recommended.
The Proud Tower
If you want to understanding why we, in this particular time, are in such great danger — a danger that is vastly increased by nuclear weapons — you must read Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower. On the surface, it is a history of the twenty years that led up to World War I. But Tuchman's unstated goal is to map the emotional dimensions of the madness that seemed to overtake an entire generation of Europeans. They were driven by a febrile excitement that seemed to cause extremism, aggression, an unwillingness to compromise, and a host of other maladies, all of which led to the pointless slaughter of World War I. And as you read, keep your ear cocked for echos of that time in the events of today. The parallels are disturbing. When you get tired of reading International Relations scholars telling you that war is the result of rational calculations, read this. It shows how events sometimes rush madly out of the darkness of human hearts.
Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower, first published in 1996. Must read.