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reviews

Review — Arsenals of Folly, by Richard Rhodes

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[Since I have a new book coming out I’m thinking about reviews lately. Here’s a rejected review, commissioned based on my book Fallout, for which I was paid a generous kill fee. I wrote it long ago, while George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were still in office. It’s a great book, and though I wish it weren’t so, it’s still topical.]

From Russia, With…Pragmatism

“The blubbery arms of the soft life had Bond round the neck and they were slowly strangling him. He was a man of war and when, for a long period, there was no war, his spirit went into a decline. In his particular line of business, peace had reigned for nearly a year. And peace was killing him.”

The action in Ian Fleming’s fifth book about 007 opens in Russia and remains there for roughly its first third. Only when we reach the eleventh chapter (“The Soft Life”) do we see James Bond strangled by those blubbery arms, his spirit in decline, dying from peace.

Richard Rhodes’ latest book on nuclear weapons, Arsenals of Folly, also opens and remains in Russia for a long time and paints a similar picture of despair. And as with a good thriller, the apparent misdirection of initially focusing on the Chernobyl accident will make you wonder where he’s leading you. But just as readers from Kennedy to Reagan came to trust Ian Fleming to tie things together and deliver a thrilling and satisfying story, readers have come to trust Richard Rhodes to do the same when it comes to nuclear weapons. And he does.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb began with scientists at work, and Arsenals of Folly follows suit. That’s where the similarities end, though, as Rhodes quickly moves from the disaster at Chernobyl — as seen through the disillusioned eyes of physicist Stanislav Shushkevich — to a detailed examination of Mikhail Gorbachev’s background and rise to power. Gorbachev ascends amidst a corrupted leadership and dual-use economy, where virtually every industry has to service both military and civilians, and where when push comes to shove, guns trump butter.

And shove always came. Ignoring warnings from doves like Eisenhower (“You can’t have this kind of war. There just aren’t enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.”) and Churchill (“If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.”), the fledgling U.S. neo-conservatives advising the executive branch promoted nuclear arms as useful deterrents and nuclear war as winnable. Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz all make early appearances. They and their agendas have been with us for decades, but were held somewhat in check by their presidential patrons; Nixon, Reagan, and the first Bush often ignored their advice. Cheney in particular is foiled by George H.W. Bush (via James Baker and Brent Scowcroft) in his efforts to undermine Gorbachev via his proposals for forcing regime change. Rhodes likens him to “the troll under the bridge, watching for billygoats,” and is clearly not a fan.

So as we move into the middle section of the book, the contrast with his previous books becomes particularly stark in that Rhodes shows us no great breakthroughs or discoveries in engineering or science, nor do we feel a sense of adventure, no matter how misguided. All we get is unenlightened self-interest and deception. And, though Rhodes’ subtitle at first seems a misnomer, when we reach this middle section he provides the appropriately depressing details of how the arms race was literally manufactured through the chicanery of the military-industrial complex players on both sides of the Bering Strait.

Rhodes makes the argument throughout that the Soviet Union wasn’t a real threat to the U.S. for technical reasons (even during Kennedy’s so-called missile gap the U.S. had better and more numerous weapons, and a greater capability to deliver them), and neither was a real threat to the other for practical reasons: neither side had a first strike policy, though each believed the other had.

So much for military intelligence, and the efficacy of real-life secret agents.

This section of the book closes with a chapter titled, “The Warheads Will Always Get Through,” which analyzes Ronald Reagan’s background and how it serves as a prelude to his meetings with Gorbachev. His evangelical fervor, his strong and unshakeable belief system, his willingness to ignore the science behind SDI, and his disinterest in details all imply a comparison to the current president Bush. However, Reagan’s genuine and visceral fear of nuclear weapons and their use provides for a sharp contrast with other presidents and Soviet leaders.

Rhodes does an excellent job of proving out Einstein’s quote “The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking” in this middle section. After the heroic Gorbachev in the first part and the delusional policies and politics of the second, you’re primed and relieved to cheer on Reagan’s optimism and belief that the two leaders can put an end to the nuclear arms race.

So, the mood lifts in the eleventh chapter, which opens the third and final section of the book. Titled “Common Security,” it focuses on the negotiations between Reagan and Gorbachev at the end of the Cold War. Like many, including  John Arqilla in The Reagan Imprint (reviewed by Mark Williams in the May/June 2006 issue of MIT’s Technology Review), I thought of its conclusion as mainly a demonstration by Reagan that U.S. Visa cards had a higher credit limit than their Soviet counterparts. But while it was about the economy, by this point in the book Rhodes has already made the case that the change had been a long time coming, and Gorbachev was already looking for a way out of the game.

Even with all the details and nuances of arms negotiations offered here, the book gets simpler: Gorbachev and Reagan. Geneva and Reykjavik. Testing SDI in the laboratory or in space. Both leaders realizing, in the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer, that the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were “two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.”

Reagan escaped these negotiations with his political life, despite the best pre-Geneva efforts of some of his advisors. (Though after Reykjavik, many changed their tune, at least temporarily.) George H.W. Bush did not, and neither did Gorbachev, an irony for Rhodes, who paints Gorbachev as heroic throughout; much more so than Reagan, calling SDI his “hubristic dream.” Further, according to Rhodes, Gorbachev was much more willing to share credit for ending the Cold War with the U.S. than Reagan or Bush, with the caveat that in sharing credit he also wanted the U.S. to share the blame for creating and promoting it.

Rhodes puts forth a convincing argument that Chernobyl is a pivotal event in all of this, and one of Gorbachev’s few failures in implementing the openness in public discussion about current and historical problems that characterized glasnost. In the process of canonizing Gorbachev, readers carried along by the narrative might forget the extent of the cover-up of this accident. But in the end, Chernobyl is Chekhov’s Gun, placed in the hands of Stanislav Shushkevich. Now president of Belarus, the man who lost faith in Gorbachev because of the way he handled the dissemination of information about Chernobyl becomes the one to deliver the news to Gorbachev that he, along with Leonid Kravchuk (president of Ukraine) and Boris Yeltsin have agreed to dissolve the Soviet Union. He does this only after Yeltsin has already told George H.W. Bush the news of Gorbachev’s ouster.

Fleming’s From Russia With Love ends with an unconscious Bond crashing to the floor, his triumph compromised by a last minute (though of course temporary) victory for the Soviet spy organization SMERSH. Rhodes ends his book by painting the end of the Cold War as an equally compromised victory, accusing the U.S. of “obstinately misreading the failure of our authoritarian counterpart on the other side of the world, to our shame and misfortune…”

It’s an emotional way to close, but appropriate. Facts and figures aren’t the point of this book.
On page 242, Rhodes explains Gorbachev’s and Reagan’s incorrect recollections of their first meeting at Reykjavik by noting that “[f]actual memory is more fallible than emotional memory.” I think the same will be true for readers of Arsenals of Folly; it certainly was for me. The book is dense with both fact and emotion, and in the end it’s the emotions that stick. (One of the few facts that stuck appeared near the end, where Rhodes quotes Carl Sagan’s calculation that the Cold War cost the U.S. $10 trillion–enough to buy everything we collectively own except for the land itself.) Bewilderment during the opening section, depression throughout the middle as both sides engage in “threat inflation”, and hope tinged with amazement and despair in conclusion. That’s what Rhodes makes us feel.

This is the third important book on nuclear weapons Rhodes has written in as many decades. I hope the one in the 2010s can be his last — not because he’s done writing, but because the problem is solved. Given that some of the bit part villains in Arsenals of Folly later found starring roles in the U.S. government, I look forward to Rhodes’ next book, but we may have to look to fiction for the safer world it deserves.

Publishers Weekly, on HAWKING

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I promise not to do this with every review (he says, hoping there will be many more to come…for which there’s no guarantee) but it’s always great to see something nice right off the starting line: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-62672-025-1

What to do about good reviews and fans: Two quotes from Heinlein

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I’m in the middle of the first volume of Patterson’s meticulous biography of Robert Heinlein (Robert A. Heinlein in Dialogue with His Century: Learning Curve) and among the many interesting things RAH said, in interesting ways, the following two quotes stuck out.

The first one is a downer, but it goes to show that some things don’t change fast enough, sadly enough. Writing to Marion Zimmer Bradley in 1964, he had this to say about behavior he experienced at the hands of people who ostensibly loved science fiction in general and his work in specific:
“The unique problem of organized fandom is one that I have wondered about for many years. Here is a group made up largely of well-intentioned and mentally-interesting people — how is it and why is it that they tolerate among themselves a percentage of utter jerks?–people with no respect for privacy, no hesitation at all about libel and slander, and a sadistic drive to inflict pain. Marion, I do not understand it.”
I’ve been lucky in this, and have encountered few utter jerks. A lot of friends and artists I’ve worked with have not — this is especially true for the women professionals — and I’m clearly no smarter than Heinlein, since I also do not understand it.
On a more positive note (in terms of maintaining sanity) RAH, writing to John W. Campbell in 1941, shows he knew not to be so foolish as to take reviews that glow to heart:
“The write-up made me sound so omniscient that I was tempted to call myself up and ask for some advice and a little coaching.”
I’ve been lucky to get some flattering reviews myself, and I do wonder who that writer is they’re talking about, and could I maybe meet him someday.
The converse is true as well. When someone hates your book (I just noticed my first one-star review for Feynman on Amazon) it doesn’t mean I’m no longer omniscient…I just never was.
Now, back to writing things I hope I can be proud of, and that maybe some other people will like. 

Something(s) to read, 2014

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It’s finally getting cold again, and I’m staying
inside and reading more. You might also plan to spend extra time
indoors in the next few weeks. Or months. We’ll see what the Polar Vortex has to say about that. So in case you wondered, here
are the best books I read in 2014, complete with
my brief notes to myself about them. They’re in no particular order — they’re all good and some are even better than that.

I hope you find
something new here that you like!
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Some Kind of Fairy Tale
Joyce, Graham
I couldn’t wait to return to reading it. Not sure who was telling the story in the book, or whether that person is at all believable, but (and so!) it’s an excellent evocation of mystery.
Excession
Banks, Iain M.
A Culture novel, full of great ideas. The plot didn’t move me (or hold me) from start to finish, probably because I read it over too extended a period. Still, as always with Banks, a worthwhile journey.
The Martian
Weir, Andy
Super fun super hard SF. Everybody wants to be Mark Watney…or should. Read this.
Every Day
Levithan, David
Excellent premise, execution, and resolution. Though when we discussed this in our reading group the people who knew developmental psychology weren’t as convinced by it, this hooked me from the start, held me throughout.
The Girl in the Road
Byrne, Monica
Interesting and well written, and even though I’m not sure I got every allusion or how things fit together in the end, it’s worth re-reading to get those things, and I probably will. I still have images from it in my head.
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore
Sloan, Robin
Quite a lot of fun, and would have been almost perfect if it hadn’t failed on the cryptography front. Still, that’s forgivable for many great scenes and quotes, such as one describing Google’s many research projects, one of which was “developing a form of renewable energy that runs on hubris.”
Wool
Howey, Hugh
Excellent. You probably already knew this.
Pump Six and Other Stories
Bacigalupi, Paolo
A clear and present and frightening near future, esp. the title story.
Non-fiction
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Rex
Colonel Roosevelt
Morris, Edmund
It’s hard to recommend these books enough. They read like novels, even the bits that would be desert dry in other people’s hands. This is in part because of Morris, and largely because of Roosevelt himself…what a life. It will be hard to read biography again after this. (Not really, but it’s hard to imagine a better subject, handled better.)
Truck: A Love Story
Perry, Michael
Fully entertaining, with some especially good bits of writing and insight about writing. And i’s about a truck.
Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington
Teachout, Terry
Very good, though I got impatient (mostly because of ignorance) with the analysis of the jazz in terms I don’t understand. But this is a more complex and compelling book than others I’ve read about my favorite composer/arranger/bandleader.
The Sports Gene
Epstein, David
Interesting exploration of what makes top athletes what they are; so many factors, including sports-specific training and mental databases, but mostly? Optimized body types and good genes coupled with good training.
Ten Years in the Tub
Hornby, Nick
Combines previous books, but with a couple hundred pages I hadn’t read. They are, like what came before, excellent. Makes me want to read even more.
Infidel
Ali, Ayaan Hirsi
I learned a lot I didn’t want to know about the world from this book, including just how much any success and happiness I’ve had is earned and not just a matter of almost unbelievable good luck. (Hint: it’s mostly luck.)
Fiction
Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems
Collins, Billy
Poetry I like! A lot. Amazing! So many excellent choices in it.
Out of Sight
Leonard, Elmore
Entertaining, light, fun. Leonard writes so smoothly you forget you’re reading a book.
Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Semple, Maria
Light and a farce and I read it just after Infidel so the mental relief was particularly good.
Lord of Misrule
Gordon, Jaimy
Fantastic storytelling and imagination and world-building. Magical realism? I’m not sure, but it works through-and-through.
Graphic Novels
[I read relatively few of these this year. Probably because I was absorbed with working on one of my own (and adding to another), so that part of my brain was super-saturated with comics most of the time. But I still snuck a few excellent ones past my own defenses.]
Clockwork Game
Irwin, Jane
Fascinating story, beautifully told and drawn. A graphic novel about the Mechanical Turk was like catnip to me, and it was fresh and good catnip and I’m still drooling and that’s enough of that metaphor.
The Encyclopedia of Early Earth
Greenberg, Isobel
Very well done, and she’s already so good that if she gets better still (I get the sense that she’s young) she’ll be a superstar.
This One Summer
Tamaki, Mariko; Tamaki, Jillian
Everybody already knows this book is terrific, right? 
The Shadow Hero
Yang, Gene; Liew, Sonny
Ho hum, another fabulous book with Gene Yang’s name on it. Doesn’t he get tired of being better than everybody else? (I hope not.) This time, a superhero story, with great art by Sonny Liew.
The Property
Modan, Rutu
Well done, and heavily layered. Worth reading again.
Bluffton
Phelan, Matt
Another book about summer, and this too captures it perfectly. It does so differently from the Tamakis’ book, proving that there’s more than one way to be wonderful.
Walt Before Skeezix: 1918-1920
King, Frank O.
Nostalgia for something I never knew, and wouldn’t have participated in is a weird and wonderful feeling.
The Warren Commission Report: A Graphic Investigation
Mishkin, Dan; Colon, Ernie; Drozd, Jerzy
Excellent, detailed, and true to its subject matter.
The Cartoon Introduction to Philosophy
Patton, Michael F.; Cannon, Kevin
Great introduction to the major fields of philosophy. You can’t buy this yet, but when you can, you should.

Something(s) to read, 2013

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Up here above the 42nd parallel the weather is such that I’m staying
inside and reading more, and you might also plan to spend extra time
indoors in the next few weeks. Or months. So in case you wondered, here
are the best books I read in 2013, complete with
my brief notes to myself about them. They’re in no particular order — they’re all good and some are even better than that.

I hope you find
something new here that you like!

Non-Fiction

Black Holes & Time Warps
Kip Thorne
Excellent, and worth working your way through it slowly to feel the wonder of what’s going on out there.
We Learn Nothing
Tim Kreider
Contains the best essay on politics I’ve read in ages: “When They’re Not Assholes”. He’s a terrific writer all around.
John Adams
David McCullough
An admirable book about an admirable person. McCullough gives him a pass on quite a lot, but makes a good case for doing so. And Jefferson comes off poorly, certainly by comparison, and that may be fair…though the book is titled Adams, so there’s a selection bias here.
My Beloved Brontosaurus
Brian Switek
Fine overview of the current state of the art in dinosaur research. He’s also a great speaker, so if you get a chance to see him, do it. (I did months after reading the book, so no selection bias here, I don’t think!)
Animal Wise
Virginia Morrell
Great survey of the current state of research into whether animals have minds (yes) and how they think (more and harder than we give them credit for). See above about speaking excellence.
Gulp
Mary Roach
Great as usual. Just read everything she’s written, okay?
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth
Chris Hadfield
If you’ve seen his videos from space, you know you can expect earnestness and honesty and humor. You get it here. (And I got to meet him here in Michigan, and the wonderful Schulers Books.)
Fiction
The Art of Fielding
Chad Harbach
Very well written; more than a baseball book, though it’s that too. I would read another just like it, but this is too good do a sequel.
Science Fiction/Fantasy
2312
Kim Stanley Robinson
Sweeping, epic, real. You know the drill with KSR. Great, as usual.
The Name of the Wind
Patrick Rothfuss
No closure at all, but effortless (seeming!) writing and a good epic style and story. I read the next one too, and it just about drove me crazy in some respects, the least of which is that closure thing. But the guy can write!
The Sorcerer’s House
Gene Wolfe
Puzzling, but pulled me through quickly. Much more there than meets the eye, and the transitions between reality and faerie realms were slick and disorienting, just the effect he intended, I’m sure.
Zone One
Colson Whitehead
Layered and elliptical and digressive and funny. Not sure what the point was, or is, but I’ll think about this again, and will read more by him. He’s a terrific writer. And speaker…it was a great year for hearing first-rate authors speak!

The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaiman
Beautiful. His best. Cf. Mary Roach above, though they could hardly be more different in subject matter and scope. (Also cf. above re. getting to hear him speak. Dang, it was a really great year for that.)
Young Adult
Seraphina
Rachel Hartman
Superb, and funny, and real-feeling. A well-built world and a sequel awaits. We’re lucky, we readers!
A Hat Full of Sky
Terry Pratchett
Another Wee Free Men and Tiffany Aching delight.
Graphic Novels: Fiction
Marble Season
Gilbert Hernandez
Just about the perfect kids book, or rather, a book about what it’s like to be a kid.
You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack
Tom Gauld
Odd and fun and a book-lover’s book
Genius
Steven T. Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen
Excellent, and I think subtler than I gathered on first reading. And I gathered me some subtlety, I think. So I’ll read it again.
Boxers & Saints
Gene Yang
Oh Gene, you can do no wrong. This is a terrific matched pair. Deep and broad and human.
Strange Attractors
Charles Soule, Charles and Greg Scott
Good premise, well executed. Solid fun with some math as seasoning.
The Adventures of Superhero Girl
Faith Erin Hicks
Fun, light, peppy, funny.
Building Stories
Chris Ware
Amazing formal work, again. Depressing story, again. Worth feeling sad about.
Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant
Tony Cliff
A delight. Really and truly rollicking. I read it on the web, I read it in print, and I’ll read it again and again in print again. It really is a delight, and notice how I don’t stoop to the Turkish pun there?
Bad Houses
Sara Ryan and Carla Speed McNeil
A straightforward story that isn’t — the story structure is clever and handled deftly in both the writing and the art. Impressive and enjoyable.
Graphic Novels: Non-Fiction
Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller
Joseph Lambert
Wonderful depictions of Keller’s inner life, and how she learned. I was floored by how good this is.
March
John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell
Hits the trifecta: First rate in both story, significance, and art.
Relish
Lucy Knisley
Great book, and bonus: recipes!
Alec “The Years Have Pants”
Eddie Campbell
He’s been great from the get-go, it seems, and at 638 pages, is itself remarkable how consistently great he’s been.

Something(s) to read, 2011: Graphic Novels

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Up here above the 42nd parallel the weather is such that I’m staying inside and reading more, and you might also plan to spend extra time indoors in the next few weeks. Or months. So in case you wondered, here are the best books-without-many-pictures I read in 2011, complete with my brief notes to myself about them. They’re in no particular order; they’re all good and some are even better than that. I hope you find something here that you like!

Fiction

Finder: Voice
McNeil, Carla Speed
Dense and entertaining, as always!

Anya’s Ghost
Brosgol, Vera
Excellent. I’m not sure why the colors shifted in places, but if it’s on purpose I’ll find out upon re-reading, and if not it doesn’t detract. Really well done.

Shapes and Colors
Thompson, Richard
Keeps getting better.

The Complete Peanuts: 1979-1980
Schulz, Charles
Still has it — a couple classics (“Have you ever considered you might be wrong?”) and a revealing sequence about what must have been a summer bible camp. Revealing in that I’d like to know what prompted it, at least…

Love and Rockets: New Stories 4
Hernandez, Jaime; Hernandez, Gilbert
Once again, Jaime H. knocks it out of the park.

Infinite Kung Fu
McLeod, Kagan
Almost perfectly evokes the best of kung fu movies. Terrific characters, intricate and goofy plot, spot-on dialogue. Great.

Hark! A Vagrant
Beaton, Kate
Extra commentary, hardcover, fun, hilarious, hurray.

The Complete Peanuts: 1981-1982
Schulz, Charles
Particularly good material here. Some of the funniest I can remember, in fact!

Dear Creature
Case, Jonathan
Unique and beautifully drawn. Charming too — a great debut.

The Storm in the Barn
Phelan, Matt
Really good art and effective wordless pages and sequences, simple story, beautifully done all the way through.

Zahra’s Paradise
Amir; Khalil
Tragic and moving. Fast-paced and educational as well. Up there with Persepolis as an introduction to another culture.

Non-Fiction

Dar (vol 1-2)
Moen, Erika
Honest and charming and funny.

The Stuff of Life
Schultz, Mark; Cannon, Zander; Cannon, Kevin
Well drawn and fun, even if the abundance of facts slow down the narrative a little.

Evolution
Hosler, Jay; Cannon, Zander; Cannon, Kevin
Excellent.

Cancer Vixen
Marchetto, Marisa Acocella
Much better than anticipated, with lots of narrative invention and a not-at-all-sappy (which is what I was betting on going in) throughline.

Paying for It
Brown, Chester
Clinical and rather ugly, and the end-notes are not convincing to me. (Lots of straw men standing around.) But an interesting book about a taboo subject, and it will stick with me.

Vietnamerica
Tran, GB
Wrenching, and beautiful on a formal and storytelling level.

The Influencing Machine
Gladstone, Brooke; Neufeld, Josh
Excellent. It’s much like an episode of “On the Media” in print form, with visuals. Josh does a fine job, of course.

Missouri Boy
Myrick, Leland
Well described on the jacket as a poem, and the last chapter ties things together beautifully.

Manga

Gogo Monster
Matsumoto, Taiyo
Challenging and complex. Beautifully drawn as well. An exploration of what it’s like to have and lose (on purpose?) childhood wonder. I didn’t like this nearly as much on first reading as I ended up after the discussion in book club — there’s a lot of depth here.

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