Volume 31, Number 17 · November 8, 1984
White House Roulette
By George W. Ball
Deadly Gambits
by Strobe Talbott
Knopf, 380 pp., $17.95
In opening the box of the atom's secrets, man did not unleash evil, he merely acquired the capacity to unleash it. This left him with the oppressive burden of free choice—the power to decide whether or not to blow up the world. So the earth's fate continues to depend on an unanswered question of potentially tragic dimensions: Are men and women sufficiently mature, psychologically and institutionally, to make that decision rationally? Or will history prove Homo sapiens a biological monster with his scientific faculties grotesquely overdeveloped in relation to his political or moral evolution?
Review, 5863 words
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