How does a left-wing satire from the 1960s become a "bible" to today's Radical Right? Recently resurfacing into polite society by way of a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal, this book makes a chillingly convincing claim to be a sinister government document on the dangerous effects of "permanent peace" on society and the economy. Brilliantly rendered in the vein of Dr. Strangelove, this reports proves frighteningly prescient of our current social and economic dysfunction. Author publicty.
In a tradition of political satire that ranges from A MODEST PROPOSAL to DR. STRANGELOVE falls the perplexing, ingenious, and ceaselessly curious REPORT FROM IRON MOUNTAIN. Upon its first appearance in 1967, this best-selling "secret government report" sparked immediate debate among journalists and scholars with its disturbingly convincing claim: a condition of "permanent peace" at the end of the Cold War would threaten our nation's economic and social stability. Although finally identified as an antimilitarist hoax by writer/editor Leonard Lewin, who conceived and launched the book with a consortium of peace movement intellectuals including future NATION editors Victor Navasky and Richard Lingerman, novelist E.L. Doctorow, and economist John Kenneth Galbraith, IRON MOUNTAIN would eventually take on a life of its own.