This is a well written historical novel set around the events of the nuclear arms race from the 1950s and early 1960s. I’ve been reading history for well over fifty years but learned much from ‘the cold war’ decades. I received this book from LibraryThing for an honest review and I award it 3 stars. ( )

I have finished the first two books in Thomas Yeggy’s First Strike series. This is a historical fiction series following the development and deployment of nuclear weapons in WWII and Cold War. Book 1 is Mushroom Cloud and is set from the start of WWII to the death of Stalin. Book 2 is Finding Designated Ground Zero and is set from the death of Stalin to JFK’s assassination.

I found these two books to very interesting and covers the political and military discussions around the development and deployment of nuclear weapons. The story is primarily set in a conference room and an interrogation of Dr. Caleb Young by William Forde of the FBI. The setting is about one year after the JFK assassination. The books go back and forth in time between the events discussed during the interview and the interactions of the two main characters in the conference room.

The fictional Dr. Caleb Young was a physicist who served in the U.S. State Department and the CIA during his career. He was also a member of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, NM. He has kept daily journals of his meetings and major events during his government service. He references the documents during the interrogation. He participated in high level discussions with the White House, military, espionage services, and foreign governments during his service.

The story line through these two books is well documented and footnote references to a number of government documents. As a reader who is interested in the cold war, this was a very interesting series to read. To anyone with similar interests regarding the policy development during the cold war, this is a very good novel to further your understanding of the series of events that occurred during this period of history.

I received these two books through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. I found them to very good and have purchased the third book in the series. I strongly recommend these books to anyone who likes historical fiction. ( )