Gift of Time: The Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons Now, Jonathan Schell

Schell has now produced a work of equal - or greater - historical significance to his earlier work. In a series of conversations with officials as diverse as Vietnam-era Defence Secretary Robert S. McNamara, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and the last commander of the Strategic Air Command, General George Lee Butler, Schell finds support for the abolition of nuclear weapons in the most unlikely places; among the very generals and politicians whose actions and policies brought us repeatedly to the brink of nuclear war. Writing in a spirit of optimism and hope, Schell identifies an approach, which he terms 'the horizontal path', to nuclear disarmament. He calls on us all 'to snap out of our cold-war trance, end our forced cohabitation with horror, and take the step that alone can free us from nuclear danger and corruption, namely the abolition of nuclear weapons'.