Ron Rosenbaum - How the End Begins

And to independent—and seemingly omniscient—researchers such as my longtime friend Craig S. Karpel whose acuity and sources were invaluable.

My long-running conversations with my friend Errol Morris, who dealt with many of these issues in The Fog of War, have always been thought-provoking as has his infallible sense of the absurd.

And having an attorney like Dan Kornstein who is also an excellent Shakespearean is a lucky break for me.

And I would alike to thank all those others I talked to, quoted here or not, who acknowledged the seriousness of my questions even if they differed in their answers.

At Simon & Schuster I would like to thank then-publisher David Rosenthal and editor-in-chief Priscilla Painton for seeing the merits of the book from the beginning and for unflagging enthusiasm and thoughtful support throughout the writing process. The early enthusiasm of Mike Jones, editor at Simon & Schuster U.K., meant a lot to me. And new publisher Jon Karp, who’d been a terrific editor for Explaining Hitler, made valuable suggestions.

I would like to take special note of the contribution of Priscilla’s omnicompetent assistant, Michael Szczerban, who helped me on many levels with his cheerful intelligence.

Special thanks also to the sharp-eyed copy editor, Fred Chase.

I will always be profoundly grateful to Kathy Robbins, literary agent extraordinaire, who helped me think through how to refine the vast landscape I had taken on and gave me her unvarnished assessments of early versions. Her always astonishingly acute judgment and empathic toleration of my frequent nuclear stress has meant the world to me.

She always attracts a crew of the best and brightest to her employ, led by the calm and reassuring presence of David Halpern. I’m especially grateful for the almost daily support of Kathy’s assistant, Mike Gillespie, and couldn’t have done without Katie Hut, Ian King, Rachelle Bergstein, Rebecca Anders, Robert Simpson, and Kate Rizzo Munson.

Jacob Weisberg, David Plotz, head honchos at Slate, and my super-smart editor, Julia Turner, deserve my thanks for encouraging the reporting I did on various aspects of nuclear contentions as I was writing the book. Fred Kaplan, my colleague there and author of the superb study of the first age of nuclear strategy, The Wizards of Armageddon, was especially generous with his encouragement and suggestions. As was his wife, Brooke Gladstone, host of NPR’s On the Media, who made me feel I had something to say. Speaking of NPR, I was impressed by the way Ira Glass saw the larger dimensions of my “Letter of Last Resort” Slate column for his This American Life interview, which you can hear on a podcast.

My research assistant, Liz Groden, has made an extremely valuable contribution to the book, tracking down the arcane and inaccessible with remarkable skill. I couldn’t have put this book together without her help.

I’ll never be able to thank my sister, Ruth Rosenbaum, enough. A talented psychotherapist, her calm and belief in me has made all the difference, not just in this book but in my life.

I have so many friends and colleagues to thank that I know I will be waking up in the middle of the night slapping my forehead and saying, How could I have left him or her out. Please forgive me if you’re one of those.

But to begin there is Betsy Carter and her husband, Gary Hoenig, Stanley Mieses, Steve Weisman, Jonathan Rosen, Susan Kamil, David Samuels, Virginia Heffernan, Peter Kaplan, Jesse Sheidlower, Helen Rogan, Alfred Gingold, Nina Roberts, David Greenberg, Nancy Butkus, Gene Stone, Nat Hentoff, Emily Yoffe, Karen Greenberg, David Livingston, Gil Roth, Lauren Thierry, Gary Rosen, Julia Vitullo-Martin, Kitty Barnes, Qanta Ahmed, and all the Templeton people, Dora Steinberg, Mark Steinberg, Mike Yogg, the Greenberg family, Tina Brown, Harry Evans, Larry Rosenblatt, Amy Gutman, Robert Vare, Sarah Alcorn, Jeffrey Goldberg, Garland Jeffreys, Lucian Truscott, Lisa Singh, Caroline Marshall, Alana Newhouse, John Roche, Deb Friedman, Rebecca Wright, Liz Hecht, Sarah Kernochan, Rich Molyneux, Lidia Jean Kott, Julia Kott, Xander Kott, Laura Frost, Megan Bowers, Christine Sarkissian, Julia Sheehan, Helen Whitney, Ross Wisdom, Charlie Finch, Rebecca Wright—and all my Facebook friends.

To name a few.

And finally, in the last edition of my Shakespeare book I thanked Tara McKelvey “for helping me to understand the meaning of love in the Sonnets.” This remains true, but I neglected to add she’s helped me understand so much more.

Ron Rosenbaumwas born in Manhattan, grew up in Bay Shore, Long Island. After graduating from Yale with a degree in English literature, he dropped out of Yale Graduate School to become a writer full time. His most recent books include The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups; Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil; and The Secret Parts of Fortune, a collection of his essays and journalism from The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Esquire, The New York Observer, New York magazine, and The New Yorker, among other periodicals. He edited an anthology on the subject of anti-Semitism, Those Who Forget the Past. He co-wrote an award-winning PBS Frontline documentary, Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero. He has taught writing seminars at Columbia, NYU, and the University of Chicago. He is currently a cultural columnist for Slate, and lives in New York City.

The Shakespeare Wars

Explaining Hitler

The Secret Parts of Fortune

Those Who Forget the Past (editor)

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright © 2011 by Ron Rosenbaum

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition March 2011

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Text designed by Paul Dippolito

Jacket design bu Mark Cohen

Jacket photograph © Northrop Grumann/Photolibraty

Author photograph by Qanta Ahmed

Manufactured in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rosenbaum, Ron.

How the end begins: the road to a nuclear World War III / Ron Rosenbaum.—1st Simon & Schuster hardcover ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Nuclear warfare. 2. World War III. 3. Nuclear weapons—History. 4. Deterrence (Strategy)—History. I. Title.

U263.R67 2011

355.02’15—dc22

2010022474

ISBN 978-1-4165-9421-5

ISBN 978-1-4391-9007-4 (ebook)