that would probably be a great companion to 'Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety'.

I agree so strongly that I moved it from my 'to buy' list to bought.

Also of note is Wellerstein's more recent 'The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age – The Anti-Nuclear President, the Bomb Decision, and Cold War History', which I read earlier this year and thought it was excellent.

A clipping from its closing pages:

> “What is the measure of a civilized man?” The proper answer, Lilienthal suggested, was to consider the sense that a “civilized man” was one who believed they had a responsibility to others. The invention of nuclear weapons had clearly magnified the problem: “One sees that the mark of a civilized man must be some quality that will help the world from destroying itself. He is most civilized who has those qualities and talents of leadership, by example and precept and character and ideas, that will help civilization to survive.”

To extend the reading list, I was completely floored by 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb', Richard Rhodes, but that was 20 years ago. I need to re-read it, and add 'Dark Sun' and 'American Prometheus' to round out that part of my picture of the military-industrial complex.