Nuclear War: A Scenario, by Annie Jacobsen, Dutton, 400 pages, $30
The end of the world takes less than two hours in Annie Jacobsen's Nuclear War: A Scenario. It begins one spring day when a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) erupts from a mobile launcher in North Korea. Before it hits the Pentagon, a North Korean submarine in the Pacific fires a second nuclear salvo at California. Neither missile is intercepted. Within 40 minutes of the first launch, millions of Americans are dead on both coasts.
