The books in the First Strike series trace the life of Dr. Caleb Young, a fictional character who is a composite of our scientific community during the early years of the Cold War. He was born in 1920 in Berkeley, California, to physicist parents who had migrated from Central Europe to escape the Magyarization process in Hungary. They are physicists at Cal Berkley and home-school Caleb in science and the humanities.Caleb takes the SAT test the first year it is offered, aces it, and is one of the first affirmative action, non-blue blood without boarding school credentials to be admitted to Princeton in 1936. He passes all his undergraduate courses in the space of a year and a half and enters Dr. Eugene Wigner's doctoral program. He is defending his thesis, and critics are becoming vocal when a thundering voice (Einstein's) from the back of the auditorium speaks: "Caleb is correct." Caleb was awarded his doctorate at the age of eighteen and a half. He goes on to become a staff scientist for the U.S. State Department in 1940 and works with other Hungarian-born scientists on the Manhattan Project until 1945. In late 1947, he becomes the chief science officer for the newly minted CIA.He must invent several schemes to keep the Soviets at bay until the nuclear deterrent becomes a reality in 1953, the first is operation ;Shellgame where the Silverplate B-29s are shuffled around to keep the Russians guessing, the second is operation "Anaconda" where he convinces the Soviets that the B-36 is a n intercontinental bomber capable of a 10,000-mile roundtrip. Caleb also discloses Stalin's demented plot to overrun Westen Europe resulting in Stalin's murder by Bulgannin and Khrushchev,