Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) [Paperback]

Lynn Eden (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 080147289X | ISBN-13: 978-0801472893 | Publication Date: April 2006 | Edition: 1

The book shows how well funded, professional organizations focus on what they do well, and systematically exclude what they do not do well.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Lynn Eden is Associate Director for Research/Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. She is the author of Crisis in Watertown, coauthor of Witness in Philadelphia, coeditor of Nuclear Arguments, and an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Cornell University Press; 1 edition (April 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080147289X
• ISBN-13: 978-0801472893
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #850,875 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting for Hard-Core Nuke Fans, December 6, 2004

By 

H. Campbell (houston, texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) (Hardcover)

If you're a hard-core, die-hard aficionado of nuclear weapons issues (in other words you get high reading about obscure, esoteric minutiae), this is the book for you. The author has shown admirable resolve in tracking down the details about the whys and wherefores of the nuclear weapons community's disdain for the damage caused by nuclear-induced fires. However she does get redundant more than she needs to be, and she early on makes the salient points that the rest of the book ponderously reiterates. She touches on the nuclear winter controversy, but in an almost cursory fashion; odd, considering the central role fires played in that raging debate. (I am proud that I avoided saying "that firestorm of controversy.")
Still I recommend adding it to the nuke fan's library as she does add a needed dimension to the entire philosophy of nuclear war fighting, a concept too absurd to exist in any but our own techno-crazed society.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Constructing Destruction, January 15, 2005

By 

Jonathan Mercer - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) (Hardcover)

Lynn Eden's book is terrific. It is well written, well argued, theoretically innovative, empirically rich, methodologically sound, politically important, and controversial.

Eden argues that the nuclear weapons community has misinformed policy-makers and the public about the consequences of nuclear explosions by neglecting to calculate mass fires' ferocious effects on nuclear targets. The weapons community continues to neglect mass fire because they believe it is neither predictable nor as important as blast effects. Eden argues against this conventional view. Her argument is not technical - for that she relies on two well known and well respected nuclear physicists - but historical and sociological. After translating the technical reasons why mass fire should be incorporated into models of nuclear weapons effects - the explosion creates its own environment which overwhelms local environmental factors - she addresses the alternative explanations and advances her own explanation for the neglect of mass fire. The puzzle of how so many people could be so wrong about something so important makes this an intrinsically interesting story.

The political implications of Eden's argument are profound. Not only are nuclear weapons even more destructive than we had thought, but her argument has a direct bearing on current issues in nuclear strategy. Increasingly, some deterrence theorists imagine limited strikes with low-yield weapons in a variety of scenarios - such as to deter the use of chemical and biological weapons. We should know what these weapons do before we contemplate using them.