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A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon
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| Part No: | 0307576698 |
| Manufacturer: | Random House Audio |
| MFG Part: | |
| Customer Rating: | 4.0 / 5.0 |
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From Neil Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer Prize—winning classic A Bright Shining Lie, comes this long-awaited, magnificent epic. Here is the never-before-told story of the nuclear arms race that changed history–and of the visionary American Air Force officer Bernard Schriever, who led the high-stakes effort. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War is a masterly work about Schriever’s quests to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring nuclear superiority, to penetrate and exploit space for America, and to build the first weapons meant to deter an atomic holocaust rather than to be fired in anger.
Sheehan melds biography and history, politics and science, to create a sweeping narrative that transports the reader back and forth from individual drama to world stage. The narrative takes us from Schriever’s boyhood in Texas as a six-year-old immigrant from Germany in 1917 through his apprenticeship in the open-cockpit biplanes of the Army Air Corps in the 1930s and his participation in battles against the Japanese in the South Pacific during the Second World War. On his return, he finds a new postwar bipolar universe dominated by the antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Inspired by his technological vision, Schriever sets out in 1954 to create the one class of weapons that can enforce peace with the Russians–intercontinental ballistic missiles that are unstoppable and can destroy the Soviet Union in thirty minutes. In the course of his crusade, he encounters allies and enemies among some of the most intriguing figures of the century: John von Neumann, the Hungarian-born mathematician and mathematical physicist, who was second in genius only to Einstein; Colonel Edward Hall, who created the ultimate ICBM in the Minuteman missile, and his brother, Theodore Hall, who spied for the Russians at Los Alamos and hastened their acquisition of the atomic bomb; Curtis LeMay, the bomber general who tried to exile Schriever and who lost his grip on reality, amassing enough nuclear weapons in his Strategic Air Command to destroy the entire Northern Hemisphere; and Hitler’s former rocket maker, Wernher von Braun, who along with a colorful, riding-crop-wielding Army general named John Medaris tried to steal the ICBM program.
The most powerful men on earth are also put into astonishing relief: Joseph Stalin, the cruel, paranoid Soviet dictator who spurred his own scientists to build him the atomic bomb with threats of death; Dwight Eisenhower, who backed the ICBM program just in time to save it from the bureaucrats; Nikita Khrushchev, who brought the world to the edge of nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and John Kennedy, who saved it.
Schriever and his comrades endured the heartbreak of watching missiles explode on the launching pads at Cape Canaveral and savored the triumph of seeing them soar into space. In the end, they accomplished more than achieving a fiery peace in a cold war. Their missiles became the vehicles that opened space for America.
From the Hardcover edition.
| Brief Review | 2010-03-11 | 5 / 5 |
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I bought this after hearing Sheehan interviewed on NPR.
It sat on my desk for about two months. I've finally gotten to begin reading it and I am having a hard time putting it down.
I'm fascinated by it-I think it's fantastic. If you're any kind of political junkie, if you want more back story about the Truman and Ike years, this book really fleshes things out.
I think this was well worth the price. |
| The man who led America to the space age | 2010-03-03 | 4 / 5 |
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| I knew I had to read this book when I first saw it. I had previously enjoyed "A Bright Shining Lie" and knew Sheehan is a good storyteller. In telling the story of Bernard Schriever, he's done it again with the "only in America" of an immigrant boy who made good. I am a former USAF missileer,and have spent time in Schriever's legacy organizations doing work on missile and space R&D, so I could relate to much of what is discussed in the book. Contrary to some of the reviewers who complains about the discussions of programmatic or bureaucratic details of Schriever's battles to get his programs on track, I found them to be fascinating and illuminating to the extent of what he had to do to accomplish his goals. I will quibble with some of Sheehan's technical errors in discussing some of the missile systems, but that's to be expected in a layman's work. The book is almost too short, and too many details skimmed or passed over to make it readable. I would have loved to learn more about some of the characters like Ed Hall, and to read more about the legacy Schriever left the USAF after he became the head of Systems Command. But these are minor complaints in an otherwise great read. |
| A Look at Cold War History from the Point of View of Weapons Development | 2010-02-25 | 5 / 5 |
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| This is an excellent history of the role of one American general and the development of the Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). This weapons delivery system capable of touching any place on earth had a dramatic impact on the creation of the early Cold War and the interaction of states. The impact on the strategic outlook of many countries political leadership is hard to overstate. This is an excellent read for those interested in these topics. I highly recommend this book. |
| A Fiery Peace in a Cold War | 2010-02-12 | 5 / 5 |
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| This is a definitive biography of General Benard Schiever, an immigrant from Germany who rose to the very top in the US Air Force. The book traces the history of the US air defense from the very beginning as the US Army Air Corp through the formation of the US Air Force. General Schriever contributed to the evolution from winged aircraft to the establishment of the US missile supremecy that contributed so much to the winning of the cold war, and laying the foundation for manned space flight.He had to fight incredible resistance, especially from General Curtis Lemay who believed passionately in the manned bomber. Woven into this true story is so much history up until this book has not been readily reported, especially interesting are his exploits during WW II. The contibution of so many immigrants fleeing the Nazi tierney during the 1930's is remarkablely described here. |
| Not Quite as Good as "A Bright Shining Lie" | 2010-02-08 | 4 / 5 |
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In "A Bright Shining Lie" Sheehan mastered the technique of writing the history of a complex subject (in that case, Vietman) through the biography of one man. In "A Fiery Peace," Sheehan attempts to duplicate the feat by telling the tale of the Cold War through the story of the creator of the American ICBM program, USAF General Schriever.
Sheehan's gifts as a writer and the compelling nature of the classified subject of the U.S. missile program that has not been sufficiently addressed before combine to make this a wonderful book. It is an entertaining and informative read.
At his best, Sheehan is able to show the combination of "victory disease" and the well known failing of generals who fight the last war to explain the complacency of men who went with an enormous B-52 force that was hopelessly vulnerable to first strike by missile technology that was initially ignored by the Americans. The portrayal of LeMay, who went from a truly great and creative WWII commander to a close minded tyrant lacking any policy and technology insight, is terrific.
Also well done is Sheehan's brief recount of the the Cuban missile crisis in light of everything the reader learns from the story of the American missile program. It's clear that the Russians had tactical nuclear weapons and some warheads that were mounted and then unmounted from missiles in Cuba. Had Kennedy gone along with the military's recommendation for a massive strike and invasion, these weapons would have most probably been deployed on invading troops and possibly on some American cities. Then the massive American aresenal would have obliterated the Soviet Union and possibly created a nuclear winter for the rest of the world. Kennedy's choices are vindicated by this retelling.
Also fascinating is the huge missile gap in the American's favor by the 1960 election. Sheehan portrays Sputnik as a great feat but as something of a publicity stunt. The Americans had the lead in deployed intermediate range ballistic missiles and in a practical ICBM at the development stage. It was not until the end of the 1960s did the Soviet Union begin to deploy practical missile technology that threatened a credible second strike capability.
The problem with this book is that Schriever is not as complex a man as John Paul Vann, and that the Cold War is remarkably more complex than even Vietnam. As a consequence, it is really not possible to capture the Cold War through the biographical device used so effectively in "A Bright Shining Lie."
Still, this book is absorbing and haunting in its depiction of men very comfortable with the deployment of massive nuclear strikes and even with the possibility of a first strike preemptive war. In the end, Sheehan is comfortable with more sober minded men like Schriever and sees his technology as having successfully deterred World War III. Perhaps -- but I get the nagging feeling after having read this book and others that we were very, very lucky to have escaped a nuclear holocaust during this period. |
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