January 30, 2017, Issue

Jill Lepore, in her absorbing “Autumn of the Atom,” in this week’s issue, traces the history of the apocalyptic scenario known as “nuclear winter.” She tracks it back to Carl Sagan’s campaign against Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). In 1983, Sagan, in collaboration with four other scientists, wrote an influential paper forecasting, as a consequence of nuclear war, “a nuclear winter that might result in the end of all life on the planet” (Lepore’s words). Intriguingly, Lepore also links nuclear winter with climate change. It’s this aspect of her piece that hooked me. Lepore argues that “the political campaign waged against nuclear winter—against science, and against the press—included erecting a set of structures, arguments, and institutions that have since been repurposed to challenge the science of global warming.” For example, she shows the George C. Marshall Institute, founded in 1984 for the purpose of countering Sagan and defending SDI, turning its attention, four years later, to challenging the science behind global warming.

“Autumn of the Atom” isn’t like other recent Lepore pieces, e.g., “Esmé in Neverland,” “The War and the Roses,” and “Joe Gould’s Teeth.” It’s more an argument than it is a reporting piece, a double argument – Sagan’s subversion of SDI and Lepore’s jab at critics of climate-change science. It’s written entirely in the third person – not my favorite perspective. But I relish argument, especially when it combines such a variety of piquant ideas, people, and events, as this one does. And the magnetism of Lepore’s brilliant, brisk, fluent, intelligent prose draws me on, especially lines like “Nuclear-weapons policy is a body of speculation that relies on fearful acts of faith. Doctrinally, it has something in common with a belief in Hell”; “Talking about warheads seemed like a fabulous way to be famous”; “The nuclear-winter debate has long since been forgotten, but you can still spy it behind every cloud and confusion.” For these reasons, Jill Lepore’s “Autumn of the Atom” is this week’s Pick of the Issue.