Includes index.

Part I: The Bomb and I. How could I? : the making of a nuclear war planner ; Command and control : managing catastrophe ; Delegation : how many fingers on the button? ; Iwakuni : nuclear weapons off the books ; The Pacific Command ; The war plan: reading the JSCP ; Briefing Bundy ; "My" war plan ; Questions for the Joint Chiefs : how many will die? ; Berlin and the missile gap ; A tale of two speeches ; My Cuban missile crisis ; Cuba : the real story -- Part II: The road to doomsday. Bombing cities ; Burning cities ; Killing a nation ; Risking doomsday I: Atmospheric ignition ; Risking doomsday II: The Hell Bomb ; The Strangelove paradox ; First-use threats: using our nuclear weapons ; Dismantling the Doomsday Machine -- Glossary.

From the whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers, an eyewitness expose of the dangers of America's seventy-year-long nuclear policy that - chillingly - continues to this day. Former high-level defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg reveals his firsthand account of America's nuclear program in the 1960s, and the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years. From the remotest air bases in the Pacific Command, where he discovered that the authority to initiate use of nuclear weapons was widely delegated, to the secret plans for general nuclear war under Eisenhower, which, if executed, would cause the near-extinction of humanity, Ellsberg shows that the legacy of this most dangerous arms buildup in the history of civilization - and its proposed renewal under the Trump administration - threatens our very survival. Framed as a memoir - a chronicle of madness in which Ellsberg acknowledges participating - this expose offers feasible steps we can take to dismantle the existing "doomsday machine" and avoid nuclear catastrophe. A real-life Dr. Strangelove story and an ultimately hopeful book about not just our country, but the future of the world."-- Provided by publisher.