Sept. 22, 2009
“What’s particularly valuable about Mr. Hoffman’s book… is the skill with which he narrows his focus (and his indefatigable reporting) down to a few essential areas. Thanks to interviews and new documents, he provides the fullest — and quite frankly the most terrifying — account to date of the enormous and covert Soviet biological weapons program, developed in defiance of international treaties at the same time that the Soviets appeared to be earnestly interested in reducing their weapons stockpile.
This biological weapons program — Mr. Hoffman refers to it as “a dark underside of the arms race” — included the development of a super germ that mounted a grisly one-two attack on its victims: it would make them mildly ill and then, once they appeared to recover, hammer them with a death blow.
Mr. Hoffman details how truly paranoid the Soviets were that America would launch an unprovoked nuclear attack. He offers an inside account of how Mr. Gorbachev stood up to his own generals to slow and then reverse the arms race. And he is particularly good on the dangers, after the Soviet Union’s collapse, of its stockpiles of nuclear and biological weapons, much of this material stored in unguarded warehouses.”
Read the full review By Dwight Garner.