A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry [Paperback]

As the whimsical title indicates, this is sort of a radioactive version of P.J. O'Rourke's "Holidays in Hell." The authors, a husband and wife team of journalists, spent several years touring the nuclear weapons archipelago of the United States and made side trips to Kazakhstan, Russia, and Iran.

In my opinion, the best parts of the book by far are the ones that deal with the facilities in the US such as Los Alamos, the Nevada Test Site, "Site R," and the Congressional Doomsday Bunker at Greenbrier, West Virginia. The authors interviewed a fair number of people at each place and that makes their destinations come alive (as someone who has been to Los Alamos and the Nevada Test Site, I can attest to the accuracy). I also thought the chapter about the men and women who man the ICBM silos shed light on a world and career field that I knew little about.

The book does have some weak parts. The authors pretty much got the run around while in Russia (which is to say no admission to any sites that are involved in Russia's ongoing nuclear weapons programs). Given that fact, I would have ditched that chapter and added more about American sites (perhaps the Pantex Plant in Texas). I feel the same about the trip to Esfahan, Iran (where the authors are smart enough to realize that the Iranians were putting on a propaganda display). I also think the authors gave the Iranians too much of a benefit of a doubt about their nuclear program's peaceful intentions (if you build and operate nuclear facilities that you don't declare to the IAEA as required by the Nonproliferation Treaty, it's hard to come up with an innocent explanation).

I also think that the book would have benefited from a complete chapter talking about the various hair-raising accidents that have taken place with nuclear weapons (such as the recent one involving the B-52 that flew across America with no one realizing it was carrying nuclear-tipped cruise missiles).

Finally, I think the conclusions of the book aren't very strong. The authors make a pretty good case for the idea that the raison d'etre for our nuclear weapons complex has partially evaporated with the end of the Cold War. And I give them kudos for not demanding that we relinquish nuclear weapons. But they didn't seem to be very concerned with the fact that we might still need a fair number of nuclear weapons on alert in order to deter a Russia that seems to be resembling the Evil Empire of yore more and more every day and a China whose leaders have casually talked about how the threat of them incinerating Los Angeles might deter us from going to the aid of Taiwan.

I particularly believe that this is the case with the "Reliable Replacement Warhead." The authors aren't overtly hostile to the idea of fielding such a new weapon. But they don't really seem to realize that if we are going to be able to preserve a credible nuclear deterrent force, we better have weapons that we can count on to perform exactly as they were designed, instead of the aging ones we currently have.

But in the end, the light that the authors shed on this little known in the post-Cold War era topic make book well worth reading.

Actually I've expected something different. I thought it would be more of a guide on how to travel to all those places named in the book, while it is a kind of a personal story of nuclear journey with just a few helpful tips in that regard.

My interest in this book was piqued by the favorable comparisons made between this and Assassination Vacation. While this title was a good (if a little dry) read, the writing lacked Ms. Vowell's ease. Because of the scattered nature of the trips required for this book, a smooth narrative flow does not exists, since months, if not years, separate the chapters.

This is a good library candidate, but nothing I would keep in my permanent collection.