This book attempts to conceptualize the idea of a full scale nuclear exchange between the cold war superpowers, since the idea itself is now "unthinkable". To explore this lack of understanding the author first explains in detail the immediate and long lasting effects of full scale nuclear war. Then, he comments on the situation, making a bid for sanity in an insane situation. The author believes that self-destruction and even planetary destruction "is not something that we will pose one day in the future... it is here now" (182). Schell believes that only a fundamental change in the belief system of the people of the entire planet can erase the danger currently hanging over the world; no amount of arms limitation or reduction will end the threat of total annihilation.

An overview of some of the contents found in this book, a collection of writings from The Nation magazine written in the few months after the 9-11 massacres.

William Greider, Bill Moyers and others address corporate knavery since 9-11.

Katha Pollit asks why we have to fund barbaric dictatorships like the one in Saudi Arabia and oppose progressive forces in the ME. She points to the really unbelievably courageous work of the Revolutionary Women of Afghanistan, operating for years within Afghanistan as fierce opponents of both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. She also staggers humanity by explaining why she would not allow her daughter to fly an American flag out their living room window.

Victor Navasky calls for Ann Coulter to be host of "Politically Incorrect" instead of Bill Maher. Coulter was fired by The National Review Online for saying racist things that not a few readers of that great publication probably believe but don't say so loudly publicly. On the other hand Bill Maher immediately backtracked after his infamous comments after a few advertisers for his show withdrew and he said he didn't mean what he said he loves our military people and so on. At least, he says, Miss Coulter was actually being politically incorrect in contrast to the whimpy centrist liberal Maher.

Chalmers Johnson, the former CIA analyst, has a particularly powerful piece. He quotes the U.S. Space Command's document "Vision for 2020": "the globalization of the world economy will also continue, with a widening between the 'haves' and the have-nots." He quotes the eminent senator from Georgia, the Hon. Zell Miller, as saying on the day after 9/11 that he didn't care if there was "collateral damage," lets bomb the hell out of everybody. He notes that collateral damage is one of those terms that isued to describe our destruction of Iraqi and Serb civillians by our high-flying plains. And that this might have been the term that our ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, might have used while he was helping coordinate the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Central Americans in the 80's while Ambassador to Honduras.

Richard Falk outlines his case for the attack on Afghanistan being a "just war." Numerous letters are printed in response to this including from Howard Zinn. The latter writes about the effects of our bombing: bloody young children staggering accross the Pakistani border, enitre villages and families wiped out, the evil cluster bombs, a red cross warehouse bombed.

Noam Chomsky quotes the New York Times about U.S. pressure on the military oligarchy running Pakistan to close its border to truck convoys carrying food to Afghanistan. He quotes from various aid agencies which condemned the American bombing as exacerbating the humanitarian disaster by blocking the distribution of desperately needed food aid. The 2001 Fall harvest in Afghanistan was 80 percent disrupted. Other contributors point to the sleaziness of the public relations gesture in dropping 37,000 food packets a day on a population where seven million were needing food. He refers to the massive refugee exodus from the American terror bombing of Kandahar and Herat into land-mine infested rural areas. He quotes from Michael Kinsley, Time magazine and other open supporters of the U.S. terrorist war against Nicaragua in the 80's as they openly advocated terrorist methods that would bring "democracy" there i.e. to terrorize the Nicaguan people into voting the Sandanistas out in 1990.

Alexander Cockburn points out that we on the anti-war left support eradicating Bin Ladenism. It's just that the so-called "war on terrorism" is only going to increase it over the long run. He like alot of other of the contributors, argue for non-violent legal means to aprehend the perpetrators of 9-11 such as through the international criminal court, the UN, coordinated international police work and so on.

Robert Fisk has an article from September 1998 about his interviews with Bin Laden. He quotes Bin Laden as calling the Israeli massacre of the refugees at Qana in 1996 "international terrorism" and calling for trials for the perpetrators. "Clinton used almost exactly the same words about bin Laden and his supporters in August [1998]. But the deaf, as usual, were talking to the deaf." Bin Laden lays out in the midst of ranting, in which he curiously accuses the Saudi regime of financing the defunct radical "communist" regime of North Yemen, his view that the slaughter of Iraqis because of the sanctions as a "war against Islam."

Fisk and Michael Massing write about the barbaric Northern Alliance led by the late Ahmad Shah Masood and Abdul Rashid Dostum and how they raped and plundered and bombed Afghanistan 1992-96, making people willing to accept the Taliban takeover.

Christopher Hitchens boldly shows that the Bin Ladenists are not misguided freedom fighters but barbaric terrorists. Of course nobody is actually contesting that notion and...oh why bother. Michael Massing's account of the critique of U.S. foreign policy of Fareed Zakaria and even Falk's deeply flawed arguments are much better ...

This book, inevitably, is becoming a little bit dated as time goes on for none of the articles are after December 2001 but the arguments in it still hold power.

I probably have quite a minority view on this book, even though I found it to be clearly worth reading. To me, the best part of this book is the first essay "The Real War", which, even though it's the title of the book, is presented as more of an introduction to the other two stories. This essay contains writing which is so good (even though I disagree with some of his left leaning political conclusions) it had me saying out loud 'this guy can really write'. It also had some very thought provoking material which any serious student of the Vietnam War should read and consider.

I also enjoyed his presentation of "The Military Half" and his experience flying with the Forward Air Controllers. It gave me an idea of just how these pilots worked with the air arsenal and the ground commanders to wreak havoc on the ground. However, I found this story and "The Village of Ben Suc" to be somewhat repetive in theme and content and maybe not organized as well as it could have been to make the author's points. As a result, the enthusiasm I had for reading this book and its first essay didn't survive to the end of the book. In other words, I relished reading the first essay and didn't have nearly as much enthusiasm by the time I finished the book.

The Real War: The Classic Reporting On The Vietnam War is a Jonathan Schell's outstanding commentaries on the American military operations in Vietnam and his post-war reflections a decade later. In the first part, "The Village of Ben Suc", Schell takes the reader in the action and terror that was the Vietnam war with his descriptions of the frustration and desperation of American soldiers caught up in the brutalities of bloody conflict. In the second part, "The Military Half", Schell describes the destruction of two entire provinces in South Vietnam by American bombing and ground operations, with first-hand accounts of these extensive operations and their horrific results. Rarely has a writer been so able and capable of recreating and conveying the sights, sounds, paranoia, and rage of modern frontline warfare.

The photography in the book is all black and white, a medium becoming more rare each day. Each photo is telling and technically superior. The author creates a sense of scale of the effort it took to create the atomic bomb. The words of the book serve to explain and to elaborate on the photos. I like the book simply because I'm a photographer, and I enjoy visual communication through photographs. The book is mostly to be appreciated for the visual experience and the commentary of those the author has interviewed in relation to his photographs. If you'd like to see a tremendous example of excellent photography, dealing with the horror of the atomic bomb, check out "American Ground Zero" by Carole Gallagher. Gallagher's book is definitive on the human horror of the nuclear age. It includes photos of "down winders" people who lived in the states bordering our nuclear test sites. Tredici's book is a contender, but not nearly the work of author Gallagher.

I picked up this book after hearing the author speak at a book signing in Washington, DC. I was quite impressed by the power of his thought, and this book demonstrates the same qualities of well-supported, insightful and frequently iconoclastic analysis. The central premise, as the above reviews note, is that "political power" - which is based upon the consent of the governed and the agreement by political actors to keep promises and to behave within certain rules - and "violence" - which relies upon ruling by fear of harm and actually destroys the social bonds from which actual "power" flow - are at odds, and that ultimately political ends may be more effectively achieved by application of "power," a constructive force, than by "violence." Accordingly, the author argues, the political aims of mass movements of people frequently may be more effectively achieved by non-violent means than violent ones. And lest this example be dismissed by "realists," the author analyzes in-depth examples of non-violent or mostly non-violent "revolutions" that include the Indian independence movement, the collapse of the Soviet empire, and the transformation of South Africa from apartheid state to democracy (as well as a host of other, somewhat less-striking examples including the growing democratization of South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Phillipines, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Portugal, Greece, etc.) Although, in my view, the author does not fully answer one of the central questions posed in response to pacifism - how can a non-violent movement gain political traction when confronted by a totalitarian system that utterly denies the worth of human life? - his thoughts on non-violent mass movements are fascinating and thought-provoking, and shed much needed light on largely non-violent political transformations - like the collapse of the Soviet empire or the democratization of South Africa - that have been taken for granted. Thus, while I am not entirely convinced of some of his points, I believe that the author has framed a very interesting political argument, one which cannot be dismissed out-of-hand and must be answered by those who feel that the liberal application of violence by the United States is helping to make the world a safer place.

Not by any means an easy or a quick read, this book is very worthwhile and good material for thought whether you tend to agree with the author's perspective or not. Recommended.

Schell argues that nuclear proliferation can be reversed, the doctrine of deterrence abandoned, and multilateral treaties negotiated for total nuclear disarmament. If not, we face a horrifying future where a policy of "well-managed nuclear proliferation" leads inevitably to a catastrophic "normalization" and "universalization" of nuclear weaponry.

Schell's grasp of the stunning illogic of deterrence is, as usual, ethically, politically, and strategically nuanced. But can abolition really happen? To almost everyone in the Cold War nuclear policy establishment, abolition was unthinkable in practice and unattractive as an ideal. The crucial issue is exactly what has changed since 1991. To investigate this, Schell includes twenty interviews with political, military, scientific, and intellectual leaders of the Cold War, most of whom contributed centrally to their nations' preparations for nuclear war. Interesting though they are, these interviews are shallow. The political and military men seem most concerned with the public relations value of a trendy remorse, and very few interviewees make any substantive suggestions for exiting the slippery slope leading to a horrendous new era of nuclear warfare.

Schell's own description of a pathway to abolition is vague and implausible. What he really is selling is a naive optimism that humanity will rise to the world-historical occasion. Alas, Schell's persuasive vision of the dangers we face makes it abundantly clear that such optimism is an intolerable self-indulgence.

The great contribution of Schell's book is to describe a practicable road to the abolition of nuclear weapons. For many years a writer for "The New Yorker," Schell unravels the complicated technical issues of nuclear weaponry and missile delivery systems in comprehensible English, describing an alternative vision of how international relations without nuclear weapons might look. Framing the discussion as a debate between what he calls the abolitionists and the possessionists, Schell does not restrict himself to abstract theoretical questions of strategic doctrine, but rather devotes most of the book to an analysis of the nitty-gritty technical details of how we could reduce nuclear weapons to zero in the real world. Some of the key problems that he addresses are: what does "zero" nuclear weapons actually mean as a practical matter? how can we defend against cheating or so-called "break out"? and how can we deal with the problem that we cannot undo our knowledge about how to make nuclear weapons.

Schell's thoroughly researched and clearly voiced call to action is a must read for anyone concerned about nuclear danger.

This book highlights the instability and inherint risk to the nuclear status quo, and poses as series of pragmatic possibilities for moving away from the brink of annihilation. Schell speaks with leading nuclear experts from the US, Russia and Europe--scientists who created the weapons, generals who prepared to use them, politicans who built policies around them, and scholars who have studied these issues for years--and lets them express their thoughts and concerns on the currnet nuclear situation. And it soon becomes clear that those who know the most about these weapons are those who recognize best the folly of relying upon them indefinitely.

In very accessible prose, Schell analizes a number of complex issues, introducing the readers to a number of crucial concepts such as "horizontal disarmament" and pushing the reader to imagine what a world without nuclear weapons might look like (not an easy question). He moves beyond idealism and wishful thinking, and directs the debate towards what can and must be done.

Few books contain such a wealth of valuable, primary source information in such a concise form. Fewer still contain such original, thoughtful and timely insight. A must read for both the expert and the novice.

About six months ago I read a postion paper posted on a US Army War College site avocating the reasons why we must maintain nuclear weapons indefinitely. The reasoning & logic expressed perfectly mirrored Jonathan Schell's. I taught a college level course on nuclear war, and I can assure you Schell's logic like his counterpart only confuses the ignorant masses while smugly re-assurring those with a vested interest in maintaining nuclear weapons of the stupidty and naivete' of the opposite number. Thus, the blind lead willfully the ignorant to a future madness not yet envisaged. __JPC__

This book comes at a time of important decisions concerning the continued existence of nuclear weapons in a world groping for an alternative. With the formal joining of the nuclear club by India and Pakistan the discussion on the continued existence of nuclear weapons takes on a renewed urgency.

Mr. Schell does a fine job of explaining the difficulty in getting to zero. Implicit in his work is that that the world as it presently is structured cannot escape the"security dilemma". Nuclear aboition in such a world is a remote possibility so long as nations remain in the "self-help" model of international relations. The continued anarchic situation in international affairs leaves the world with the age old game of the balance of power. What is needed is a re-conceptualiztion of how nations can relate to one another and strategies for a new international order founded on renewed spiritual insight and vision grounded in a practical expression through a new politics concerned with justice and ecological responsibility--which in the final analysis is the way out of pending conflict and is in all nations' interests. Until a commitment to a new way is made we will continue to be plagued by the nuclear threat--virtual or otherwise.

This book,serves the important purpose of reminding us that we cannot allow things to drift. History has portals of opportunity which close quite quickly. It is the time to seize the opportunity to take measures like de-alerting and horizontal disarmament described by Mr. Schell now while we have the chance. Sooner or later in an imperfect world something is bound to go wrong. Mr. Schell calls us to the task that remains unfinished. As ordinary citizens , in effect, he is asking, "What are we waiting for ?"

Schell's thoroughly researched and clearly voiced call to action is a must read for anyone concerned about nuclear danger.

This book highlights the instability and inherint risk to the nuclear status quo, and poses as series of pragmatic possibilities for moving away from the brink of annihilation.

Schell speaks with leading nuclear experts from the US, Russia and Europe--scientists who created the weapons, generals who prepared to use them, politicans who built policies around them, and scholars who have studied these issues for years--and lets them express their thoughts and concerns on the currnet nuclear situation. And it soon becomes clear that those who know the most about these weapons are those who recognize best the folly of relying upon them indefinitely.

In simple and accessible prose, Schell analizes a number of complex issues, introducing the readers to a number of crucial concepts such as "horizontal disarmament" and pushing the reader to imagine what a world without nuclear weapons might look like (not an easy question). He moves beyond idealism and wishful thinking, and directs the debate towards what can and must be done.

Few books contain such a wealth of valuable, primary source information in such a concise form. Fewer still contain such original, thoughtful and timely insight. A must read for both the expert and the novice.