15 Minutes

One of the most detailed pictures yet of the complex, ultrasecret, ultradeadly world of nuclear war, 15 Minutes shows how the bomb was used both as a tool of diplomacy and as a weapon to maintain a dangerous truce that lasted for almost fifty years. Based on ten years of research and thousands of pages of formerly classified documents, the interrelated world of early warning, nuclear weapons testing, and instant retaliation with devastating lethality are connected in ways not previously documented, and not always with good results. But more than weapons and steel, here are the people of the Cold War-the bomber pilots, the radar navigators, the signal-ferreting ravens, the scientists, radarscope dopes, and the thousands more that were tasked with testing, transporting, and delivering the bombs the scientists made. This is one of the most important works on atom war ever written.