Actually I still have the review that attracted me to the book in 1984, written by John Fowles, himself an eminent writer, but I don’t have a scanner and, try as I may, I can’t find the darn thing anywhere on the internet.
It would be very difficult to give a flavour of the book without reproducing hundreds of quotes. The book is an anthology of quotations, prose, poetry and clips from news reports, stretching right back from the Reagan/Thatcher era in which the book was compiled to pre-Christian times. The whole book makes for very thought-provoking, and at times, painful reading. One thing it is not is proselytising: the compilers simply let the selected quotes speak for themselves, though naturally the selection seen as a single body of work does represent the compilers’ “message” to the reader. As it is a compilation of short pieces of writing there is no overall “plot” to lose, though the writings are gathered into nine sections (chapters), each of which has a loose theme which I’ll attempt to sum up with a sample quote. It has to be said that the book was written at a time when the nuclear threat, in Cold War terms, seemed very acute: in this respect the book may now seem to be slightly dated, but I personally don’t think so.
Section 1 is called “Words.” Words can be used by those in power as a distorting medium: “The fundamental power of the universe, the power manifested in the sunshine that has been recognized from the remotest ages as the sustaining force of earthly life, is entrusted at last to human hands.” (comment in “The Times” on 7 August 1945 on the Hiroshima bomb).
Section 2 is largely about how we dehumanise our enemies with words: “The man beside me was saying, ‘We have a different regard for human life than those monsters do.’ He was referring to what he said was the Soviets’ belief in winning nuclear war despite casualties that we would find unacceptable. And he added that they were ‘godless’ monsters. It is this theological defect ‘that gives them less regard for humanity or human beings.’ The man telling me all this was Ronald Reagan, as I interviewed him on a flight [in 1980] from Birmingham to Orlando.” (Robert Scheer, 1982).
Section 3 is “Civilization in Suspense,” referring to how war situations can be fantasised about: “It may be several weeks or even months before I shall ask you to drench Germany with poison gas, and if we do it, let us do it one hundred percent. In the meanwhile, I want the matter studied in cold blood by sensible people and not by that particular set of psalm-singing uniformed defeatists which one runs across now here and there.” (Winston Churchill, secret memorandum, 1944).
Section 4 is called “Only part of us is sane.” “I have had the happiest possible life, and have always been working for war, and have now got into the biggest in the prime of life for a soldier…Thank God, we are off in an hour. Such a magnificent regiment! Such men, such horses! Within ten days I hope Francis and I will be riding side-by-side straight at the Germans.” (Riversdale Grenfell, 1915)
Section 5 is “Nothing, but Who Knows Nothing.” “The atomic bomb is a paper tiger which the US reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn’t.” (Mao Tse-tung, 1960).
Section 6 is “There’s a nuclear war going on inside me.”
“But the children, I think, should not be blotted out,
as I sit listening to the rise and fall
of their pleasures, the sudden change
to bad temper quickly forgotten
by the shift to joy…”
(David Ignatow, “A Meditation on Violence,” 1968).
Section 7 is called “Hope Abandoned.” “Victims of a nuclear strike in Bognor [a seaside town in southern England] would be given burial at sea, the town’s Neighbourhood Council was told. A guest speaker from Felpham Neighbourhood Council said: 'We are very lucky here because we are by the sea, so all the dead people can be taken out in a rowing boat, weighted down, and buried.” (Portsmouth Evening News, June 1983).
Section 8 is “Different Drummers.” “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” (Henry Thoreau). Could be a great signature, eh!
The last section is “In a Dark Time.”
“Some say a cavalry corps,
some infantry, some, again,
will maintain that the swift oars
of our fleet are the finest
sight on dark earth; but I say
that whatever one loves, is.”
(Sappho, 7th century BC)
There are hundreds more quotes and the ones I’ve given are biased towards the short because I’m a very slow typist. 
I promise that if you read this book you won’t come away feeling at all preached at. You ask why I liked the book - I liked it because it made me take a far more critical, “healthily-sceptical” view of the manner in which “the powers that be” present information to me. To use modern parlance, it helped me to see through “spin.” Above all, it’s an intensely humanitarian document.
Steve
It always amuses me to see people arguing against war from the safety and security of the good life that wars have won for them; so easy to forget the sacrifices of previous generations. Where would you be without your War of Independence? Or where would Europe be if the Nazis had gone unchallenged? Even if the Nazis hadn’t happened, where would Europe be if Stalin had marched through unopposed? (I include GB and Ireland when I refer to Europe.)
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