Command and control

Eric Schlosser, Allen Lane, 656 pages, hardback, £25

Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with the men who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons, Command and control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world, revealing how even the most brilliant of minds can offer us only the slightest illusion of control.

Investigative journalist Eric Schlosser, author of Fast food nation, gives us an account of accidents, near-misses, extraordinary heroism and technological breakthroughs. He considers the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: how do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them?

It depicts the urgent effort by American scientists, policymakers and military officers to ensure that nuclear weapons can’t be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission or detonated inadvertently.

At the heart of this book lies the story of an accident at a missile silo in rural Arkansas, where a handful of men struggled to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States.

Looking at the Cold War from a new perspective, Schlosser offers history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews and other ordinary service personnel who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust.

Reviews contributed by the Bookmarks socialist bookshop. Order online at www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk