Command And Control, Eric Schlosser (ISBN 9780141037912, Penguin)

Command and Control is written by Eric Schlosser. I read his bestseller fastfood nation long ago and liked it a lot so when this book came out in 2014 I bought it and read it. It was a scary read at the time and this year while we were on holiday this summer I decided to read it again in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Having grown up during the Cold War and the nuclear arms race between the Soviet Union and the US I remember the relief when the Berlin Wall fell and the threat of nuclear holocaust seemed a thing of the past. Reading this book I feel like it is a half miracle that in all those years no bomb went off by accident or someone launched a counter attack against a computer glitch. For everyone that wants to know what went on behind the curtains during the Cold War years this book is definitely a must read. The first part of it about the making of the bomb is well known and there are other books focusing on that specifically. If you read any book on the making of the first atomic bomb then you will not learn anything new here. The book is still important to read because it covers the decades that followed WW 2 describing how more and more powerful bombs were developed focusing on making them explode and not putting in safeguards to prevent them to explode accidentally. The book describes multiple accidents with nuclear bombs and missiles that could have led to nuclear detonation. Some of the accidents are almost funny if it were not that the consequences could have been disastrous or even fatal on a global scale. Reading how many accidents and narrow escapes happened with the nuclear arms of the super powers it is all the more worrying to see smaller powers striving to obtain nuclear bombs as the challenge is not so much to develop a nuclear bomb but to maintain control over it all times, having it ready to detonate when needed and at the same time preventing accidental and unwanted detonation. The book clearly illustrates that even for the super powers this was a mission impossible. I found the book a bit of a mixed bag. The book interweaves the story of an accident at a missile silo with the history of the nuclear arms race and the evolving nuclear war strategies during the Cold War. Both are interesting but the thriller about the silo accident is regularly interrupted by historical chapters which are a bit terse in contrast. So content wise I found this book excellent but stylistically it was only partially convincing. Still, I would advise everyone to read it and scan over some ‘dull’ sections if really needed.