Command and Control

A myth-shattering exposé of America's nuclear weapons.

This is the story of a fire in a nuclear-missile silo in Arkansas in 1980. A story of the technicians and servicemen who struggled--and failed--to prevent the largest nuclear weapon ever produced by the United States from exploding in a quiet rural countryside. The story of engineers who designed and built America’s nuclear weapons, of soldiers who trained for years to safely and effectively operate them, of generals who concealed dangers from the civilians they had sworn to protect and the politicians under whom they nominally served. Most of all, this is the story of the nuclear weapons themselves, the science behind their destructive power, the ways they defied all efforts to be controlled and neutralized by humans, the truth behind their countless accidents which threaten us still today.

An explosive and myth-shattering exposé of the American military’s atomic program, Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control reveals a forgotten world of squabbling generals, heroic servicemen, deceived citizens, and the unreliable, unavoidable weapons of the Cold War. Taking the catastrophe at Arkansas’s Silo 374-7 as its tragic center, Command and Control unfolds into a full-fledged history of America’s atomic age, from its desperate beginnings during the Second World War through the fever-pitch years of Soviet confrontation. With courage and wit, Command and Control exposes America’s complicated and self-destructive relationship with its most powerful invention, a weapon so important to national security it distorted the very government it was designed to protect--transforming the post-war state into an apparatus exclusively crafted to produce and deploy nuclear weapons at a moment’s notice.

Written with all the vibrancy and drama of a first-rate thriller, Command and Control is propelled by the extraordinary personalities at the heart of America’s atomic age. Scientists like Louis Slotin, who built dozens of America’s first atomic weapons by hand only to be irradiated with the slip of a screwdriver--killed in a matter of days by the blinding blue light that filled his rickety construction shed. Soldiers like General Curtis LeMay, a tough-as-nails bombardier who masterminded some of the greatest aerial attacks during World War II--who later transformed the Strategic Air Command into a single mechanized organization commanding thousands of warplanes endlessly circling Russia’s borders. Most of all, Command and Control follows ordinary servicemen navigating the enormous demands of world war and national security even as they struggle with the unreliable weapons essential to their country's safety. Men like Jeff Kennedy, who devoted years to mastering the intricacies and dangers of the Titan II missiles, finally violating orders to brave the flames in a futile attempt to save Silo 374-7 from destruction.

Drawing on newly declassified archives and on numerous original interviews, Schlosser’s Command and Control offers a full-accounting of the unreported nuclear weapon accidents that occurred on American soil, on the risks secretly accepted by military commanders on behalf of unknowing citizens, on the countless small graces that saved the world from accidently entering a nuclear apocalypse. Schlosser upends these old silences, casting a brilliant light on the machines and men upon whom America has secretly relied for decades. Audacious in its scope, penetrating in its analysis, and gripping in its story-telling, Command and Control is a tour de force of investigative journalism, an eye-opening and unforgettable history of America’s atomic age.