Command and Control

History

First published: 2013
Print length: 656 pagesPenguin Books, 2014

Description

Eric Schlosser uses the 1980 Damascus, Arkansas, Titan II missile accident—a fuel leak followed by a major explosion—as the central case in an investigation of American nuclear-weapons systems and accidents. From that incident, he surveys roughly seventy years of arsenal development, upkeep, and mismanagement, spanning the Manhattan Project, the Cold War, and the global spread of nuclear capability. The book also examines the 1961 Goldsboro crash, when a B-52 carrying two nuclear bombs broke apart in North Carolina, and the 1966 Palomares collision over Spain, which scattered plutonium. Across these accounts, Schlosser investigates cover-ups and the tension between controlling nuclear weapons and ensuring their reliability.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Direct · Journalistic · Technical

Pace

Variable

Tone

Cerebral · Earnest · Tense · Unsettling

Structure

Braided · Chronological nonfiction · Multiple timelines

Focus

Argument · Ideas · Information

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 4 / 5
Structure: 4 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

Knowledge and truthMoralityPolitics and ideologyPowerTechnology and societyWar

About Eric Schlosser

Eric Schlosser is an American journalist and author whose reporting examines large systems through the people, workplaces, and failures they often keep out of view. He began his career at The Atlantic Monthly, and his books retain the patient accumulation of evidence associated with long-form investigation. Fast Food Nation follows the fast-food industry across factories, slaughterhouses, restaurants, advertising, and real estate, connecting an everyday product to a network of labor and corporate practices. Reefer Madness turns to marijuana policy, migrant agricultural labor, and pornography, using apparently disparate underground economies to study regulation, exploitation, and cultural contradiction. In Command and Control, Schlosser builds outward from the 1980 Titan II missile accident in Arkansas, combining a tightly observed case study with an archival history of the American nuclear arsenal. Across these subjects, his characteristic method is to begin with concrete institutions and incidents, then trace the policies and incentives that sustain them. His scope is broad, but the writing remains direct, documentary, and attentive to material consequences.

Fast Food Nation Apple Books

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Penguin Books
Language: English
ISBN: 9780143125785

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