Today’s Book: War Day

Remember those glorious days in 1984, when Reagan and the Evil Empire battled over M.A.D.ness? And the pain and suffering that began in late October of 1988, when the USSR unleashed a surprise nuclear attack before we could deploy our missile shield? The millions who died on that day and in the aftermath, from radiation and diseases like the Cincinnati Flu that were too strong for our undernourished bodies? Well, Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka travelled what’s left of America in 1993, gathering impressions, rumors, interviews, and official documents, making their way as best they could under then-current conditions.

That’s what this novel attempts to present. Written in 1983, when there was still a Soviet Union and the American public had a kind of background fear, as I remember it, of a nuclear exchange. The book is told in a more or less matter of fact, semi-journalistic style, a travelogue of a ravaged but recovering America (the Soviets didn’t get to drop too many warheads but did unleash an electronics-killing EMP burst). Though the authors try to engage the emotions, including a scene when a thousand orphans are hung out to dry in Georgia and another when Strieber visits his abandoned Manhattan apartment, I don’t think they quite succeeded. An interested and engaging book but one that suffers from the common problem of lack of am emotionally satisfying resolution.

Oddly, Strieber’s web site doesn’t mention this book and I can’t find a site for Kunetka.