War and Peace in the Nuclear Age

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Good/very good. 24 cm. xii, [2], 486, [8] pages. Illustrations. Footnotes. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index. Signed by the author. slight creasing to DJ edges, ink notations & underlining to a few pages. Wilfred John Newhouse (February 6, 1929 - December 10, 2016) was an American journalist and author. He was best known as the author of the book War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, published as companion to a PBS series. Newhouse was the author of nine books and a civil servant whose work spanned over fifty years. He worked for Collier's magazine; authored numerous books on diplomacy, history, and later the airline industry. After Collier's ceased publication, Newhouse worked in broadcast journalism with ABC News and was sent in 1958 to Beirut to cover the military operation of the U.S. Marines. He is considered the preeminent historian on SALT I (the strategic arms limitation talks that took place between 1969 and 1972 and resulted in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty) for his book Cold Dawn. Newhouse joined the staff of the New Yorker where he wrote about diplomacy, arms control, and current affairs as well as profiles of prominent figures including Hussein, King of Jordan, and former U.S. Senator Alan K. Simpson. He also had a second career as a government official with the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the United States State Department. At this department, he was a negotiator of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) II. This is the companion book to the Public Television Series. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: This comprehensive review of the nuclear age chronicles the effect of nuclear weapons on relations between allies and potential adversaries. Focusing largely on the American presidency, the author argues that Eisenhower was the most astute of the nuclear-age presidents on security matters, that Reagan and Gorbachev almost achieved `the magic moment'' of superpower nuclear disarmament in their Reykjavik summit. Newhouse analyzes the weak link in the U.S. command and control system, showing how control of nuclear weapons has been diffused through the senior echelons of the military command. The reflexive paranoia that has characterized Soviet leadership since Stalin is being `effaced'' by Gorbachev, predicted the author, and the bilateral relationship currently being worked out `should be as important as arms control itself.'.