As far as non-fiction work goes the perspective the author has is quite important and in this case the author gets the brass ring. At the time this book was written it was rather unusual for a women to have 30 years of experience, in the field of journalism.The gender of a person should not have anything to do with intellect, but this is something worth noting. As far as perspectives goes it should also be noted that the husband of the author was the Bureau Chief for the New York Time's Paris France office.

What makes this book somewhat unique is that it covers some history that is not provided anywhere else and it was written at the time it occurred. Very few people know about the events this book presents and the research and presentation of the players involved in it was well done and presented.Having read quite a few books I have only seen one reference to the events covered by this book, and the facts presented were incorrect.

The three areas of history this book presents are: The US use of B52 bombers as part of the strategic defence policy in the 1960's; the incident of the air crash that resulted in four H-bombs being dropped upon Spain (None of them resulted in a nuclear explosion, but this is the main focus of the book); and the first use of deep water submersible vehicles.

To give you some idea how crazy this bit of history is, one of the items described by this book follows. The air crash that resulted in the four h-bombs being dropped upon Spain occurred at about 10 AM. These by the way were one mega-ton bombs. Two of the bombs were quickly found. However it was not until nightfall that a US general and a Spanish military person began to search for the other missing bombs. They did this with a flashlight about the size of a pack of cigarettes, and after a few hours of searching they gave up. That may give you an idea of how crazy the actions associated with event were.

The US government handled this situations so badly that they ended up letting the USSR inspect the recovered bomb, (Not some the US wanted to do), but because of the great deal of misinformation and other poor management that had occurred in dealing with this problem this happened.

The bottom line here is I do not feel that I can do this book the justice it deserves in what has been presented here. As with many episodes in history there are often a cast of colorable figures and it is felt this book does a great job in describing the characters as well as the events and much of the perspectives at the time the history being covered was written about.

This is my first effort in providing a review here, and does not feel that I have done a very good job, so I will take another approach. A few years ago I bought this book from my library at a sidewalk sale for less than 10 cents. After some discussion with the reference librarian, I managed to get this book put back in to the library. The winning argument that did this was, "It does not matter if a book is not checked out for 20 or even 30 years, you do not throw history away". Something that goes against this thinking all to often, is we have to make our decisions based upon the polls.

To say that this book covers one of the most bazaar events in American history may be an understatement.