Donald MacKenzie (1)

This is a book that is, while very interesting, also incredibly dry. This was not a book that I eagerly anticipated opening up, yet I made sure to stick with it because it was so informative.

I am young enough that all of my historical memory is post-Cold War (although I was born before it ended, I didn't understand what was happening until well after the fall of the Berlin Wall). This book is therefore a fascinating look into nuclear politics and technology before the Cold War ended. The author has a short epilogue explaining that the Cold War ended pretty much as the book went to press.

The technology pre-MEMS and pre-really good GPS is fascinating. I found the interplay between accuracy and nuclear strategy fascinating (you can't take out a missile silo if you can't guarantee that an ICBM will actually hit within a mile or so of the silo). The book also emphasizes that politics cannot be disconnected from technology (something that I wish Enrico Fermi had understood before taking the genie out of the bottle, assuming that science for its own sake would be enough of a motivation to invent the nuclear weapon to begin with).

I would not recommend this book unless you find any of these topics very interesting, as the book takes a lot of effort to get through. It is very exhaustive, which is both its strength and its weakness.… (altro)