The Doomsday Machine
Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
1st Edition
Published on 7. December 2017
432 pages
978-1-4088-8914-5 (ISBN)
Description
Shortlisted for the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-Fiction
From the legendary whistle-blower who revealed the Pentagon Papers, the first insider exposé of the awful dangers of America's hidden, seventy-year-long nuclear policy that is chillingly still extant
At the same time former presidential advisor Daniel Ellsberg famously took the top-secret Pentagon Papers, he also took with him a chilling cache of top-secret documents related to America's nuclear program in the 1960s. Here for the first time he reveals the contents of those now-declassified documents and makes clear their shocking relevance for today.
The Doomsday Machine is Ellsberg's hair-raising account of the most dangerous arms build-up in the history of civilisation, whose legacy - and proposed renewal under the Trump administration - threatens the very survival of humanity. It is scarcely possible to estimate the true dangers of our present nuclear policies without penetrating the secret realities of the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years, when Ellsberg had high level access to them. No other insider has written so candidly of that long-classified history, and nothing has fundamentally changed since that era. Ellsberg's discussion of recent research on nuclear winter shows that even a 'small' nuclear exchange would cause billions of deaths by global nuclear famine.
Framed as a memoir - a chronicle of madness in which Ellsberg acknowledges participating - this gripping exposé reads like a thriller with cloak-and-dagger intrigue, returning him to his role as whistle-blower. It is a real-life Dr Strangelove story, but an ultimately hopeful - and powerfully important - book.
From the legendary whistle-blower who revealed the Pentagon Papers, the first insider exposé of the awful dangers of America's hidden, seventy-year-long nuclear policy that is chillingly still extant
At the same time former presidential advisor Daniel Ellsberg famously took the top-secret Pentagon Papers, he also took with him a chilling cache of top-secret documents related to America's nuclear program in the 1960s. Here for the first time he reveals the contents of those now-declassified documents and makes clear their shocking relevance for today.
The Doomsday Machine is Ellsberg's hair-raising account of the most dangerous arms build-up in the history of civilisation, whose legacy - and proposed renewal under the Trump administration - threatens the very survival of humanity. It is scarcely possible to estimate the true dangers of our present nuclear policies without penetrating the secret realities of the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years, when Ellsberg had high level access to them. No other insider has written so candidly of that long-classified history, and nothing has fundamentally changed since that era. Ellsberg's discussion of recent research on nuclear winter shows that even a 'small' nuclear exchange would cause billions of deaths by global nuclear famine.
Framed as a memoir - a chronicle of madness in which Ellsberg acknowledges participating - this gripping exposé reads like a thriller with cloak-and-dagger intrigue, returning him to his role as whistle-blower. It is a real-life Dr Strangelove story, but an ultimately hopeful - and powerfully important - book.
More details
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
ISBN-13
978-1-4088-8914-5 (9781408889145)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
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Additional editions
Book
01/2019
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
€19.00
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Book
12/2017
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
€44.76
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Person
In 1961, Daniel Ellsberg, a consultant to the Department of Defense and the White House, drafted Secretary Robert McNamara's plans for nuclear war. Later he leaked the Pentagon Papers. He lectures and writes on the dangers of the nuclear era and the need for whistle-blowing. A Senior Fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Ellsberg is the author of Secrets and the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America. He is also a key figure in Steven Spielberg's upcoming film about the Pentagon Papers, The Post, scheduled to be released in December 2017. He lives in Kensington, California, with his wife, Patricia.
Content
- Intro
- Dedication
- By the Same Author
- Title Page
- Contents
- Epigraphs
- Prologue
- Introduction
- Part I: The Bomb and I
- 1: How Could I? The Making of a Nuclear War Planner
- 2: Command and Control: Managing Catastrophe
- 3: Delegation: How Many Fingers on the Button?
- 4: Iwakuni: Nuclear Weapons off the Books
- 5: The Pacific Command
- 6: The War Plan: Reading the JSCP
- 7: Briefing Bundy
- 8: "My" War Plan
- 9: Questions for the Joint Chiefs: How Many Will Die?
- 10: Berlin and the Missile Gap
- 11: A Tale of Two Speeches
- 12: My Cuban Missile Crisis
- 13: Cuba: The Real Story
- Part II: The Road to Doomsday
- 14: Bombing Cities
- 15: Burning Cities
- 16: Killing a Nation
- 17: Risking Doomsday I: Atmospheric Ignition
- 18: Risking Doomsday II: The Hell Bomb
- 19: The Strangelove Paradox
- 20: First-Use Threats: Using Our Nuclear Weapons
- 21: Dismantling the Doomsday Machine
- Glossary
- Notes
- Acknowledgments
- Index
- A Note on the Author
- Copyright
