Introduction: war in peace -- The making of bomb power. Fatal miracle ; Atomic politics ; The care and keeping of the bomb -- The national security state. Beginnings (1945-1946) ; Annus mirabilis (1947) ; Completing the apparatus (1948-1952) -- Presidential wars. Korea ; Permanent emergency -- Information power. Secrecy as embarrassment cover ; Secrecy as Congress deceiver ; Secrecy as policy disabler ; Secrecy as crime concealer -- Executive usurpations. "War powers" ; Challenging secrecy ; The unitary executive ; American monarch.
Summary
From Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills comes this groundbreaking examination of how the atomic bomb profoundly altered the nature of American democracy, and why we have been in a state of war alert ever since.
