Nuclear War

Annie Jacobsen answers with a scenario so meticulously reported it reads like a countdown to the end of the world. Drawing on interviews with former defense officials and declassified protocols, she walks through the harrowing span from launch to global catastrophe - the detection, the impossible decisions, the retaliation, the nuclear winter - in relentless present tense.

It is nonfiction shaped like a thriller, and the effect is genuinely terrifying precisely because none of it is invented. intendle recommends it as an urgent corrective to our collective amnesia about the weapons still aimed at us. An instant New York Times bestseller and a Baillie Gifford shortlist title, it has restarted public conversation about nuclear risk.