PD Smith

Must read?

04 July 2007 | cold war, Doomsday Machine, Doomsday Men | Post a comment

John Grib­bin has said some nice things about Dooms­day Men in a review for this mon­th’s Lit­er­ary Review:

“It is an impas­sioned account of every­thing from the dis­cov­ery of radioac­tiv­i­ty to plans for a Dooms­day Device (yes, there real­ly were such plans) from an author who feels that to the gen­er­a­tions grow­ing up who see the Cold War only as some­thing in his­to­ry books, the true hor­ror of nuclear weapons has been for­got­ten. While politi­cians talk glibly of ‘weapons of mass destruc­tion’, nobody has any real feel­ing for what it means to expe­ri­ence intense machine gun fire, the kind of bomb­ing that destroyed Dres­den, or a nuclear holo­caust. Nor do many peo­ple know that there are still about 30,000 nuclear weapons still ready for launch around the world. Dooms­day Men aims to address that gap, focus­ing on nuclear weapons, but also look­ing at oth­er forms of mass destruc­tion.”

 He con­cludes that Dooms­day Men is “impor­tant, and, depress­ing­ly, there is a need for it — peo­ple, espe­cial­ly younger peo­ple than me, ought to read it”.

Comments are closed.