Whole World on Fire: Organizations, knowledge, & nuclear weapons devastation by Lynn Eden, Cornell University Press, £19.50/$32.50, ISBN 0801435781 Reviewed by Rob Edwards
YOU would have thought it was obvious. Explode a nuclear bomb over a city, and the result will be a devastating firestorm which will wipe out life over a large area. That is, after all, what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
But according to Lynn Eden’s fascinating investigation, Whole World on Fire, the impact of mass fires has been ignored by US nuclear war planners for the past 50 years. They have focused instead on the damage caused by the blast, and…
