Title: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy
Author: David E. Hoffman
Genre: Nonfiction
Pages: 608
Publication Date: Aug 3, 2010
StoryGraph* Moods: informative, dark, tense
How I Stumbled Upon This Book: I read, on recommendation, his book The Billion Dollar Spy (as research) – in seeing what else he had written, this caught my attention. (I started by borrowing it from the library – halfway through, I bought it.)
Other Books by this author: The Oligarchs, The Billion Dollar Spy, Give Me Liberty
*StoryGraph also offers content warnings.
Description: (from Bookshop.org)
“The first full account of how the Cold War arms race finally came to a close, this riveting narrative history sheds new light on the people who struggled to end this era of massive overkill, and examines the legacy of the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that remain a threat today.
“Drawing on memoirs, interviews in both Russia and the US, and classified documents from deep inside the Kremlin, David E. Hoffman examines the inner motives and secret decisions of each side and details the deadly stockpiles that remained unsecured as the Soviet Union collapsed. This is the fascinating story of how Reagan, Gorbachev, and a previously unheralded collection of scientists, soldiers, diplomats, and spies changed the course of history.”
Why I recommend this book: I know this is not normally the type of book I recommend – it’s thick, densely packed, and a bit of a slog to get through (and I mean that in a good way – it’s so informative. This is not something you’ll be able to just sit and read in a day.).
First, he brought receipts. The pages of source material take up a good chunk of paper. Even better, these are sources from both sides. This is not a one-sided account. And it is a truly eye-opening look into the cold war. (And again – not just eye opening on one side. I learned a lot about my own country in reading this…[gulp])
Next, as the St. Louis Dispatch puts it (printed on the back cover), “Hoffman reinforces his scary thesis with breathtakingly detailed research.” That thesis? “Today, the weapons to destroy civilization, the legacy of the Cold War, are still with us. They are the Dead Hand of our time, a lethal machine that haunts the globe long after the demise of the men who created it.” Did I mention the ‘eye opening’ thing?
It’s well written and easy to read (easy meaning easy to follow – there are a lot of details and support and explanations that make it so). When needed, he breaks thinks down in a way that anyone can understand.
Also, it won the Pulitzer – so you don’t just have to take my word for it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“The United States cannot predict Soviet behavior because it has too little information about what goes on inside the Soviet Union; the Soviets cannot predict American behavior because they have too much information.”
~ David E. Hoffman, The Dead Hand
