5 Stars | The Most Delicious Form of Literary Red Meat

Mushroom Cloud by Thomas Yeggy is the most delicious form of literary red meat for those who cannot get enough serious fiction to read in the military, science, and history genres.

Yeggy clearly knows a great deal about the politics that gave rise to a period when an arms race was ratcheting up faster than most agencies knew what to do with, and about multiple branches of physics.

​Mushroom Cloud by Thomas Yeggy is a political military fiction novel and the first book in the author's First Strike Series. The novel is set primarily in the mid-twentieth century, but the timeline does reach back earlier to fill in the backstory of the book's main character and protagonist, Caleb Young, and his years as a Princeton student under the tutelage of Dr. Albert Einstein, and several other prominent moments with other characters both real and imagined. Caleb is eventually hired by the United States State Department which spares him from the draft and, like his father before him, he becomes an intrinsic piece in the chess game of American politics and global warfare. Caleb's brilliance as a physicist fast-tracks his career through agencies and places him in the top tier of government machinations. In this capacity, he ultimately becomes central to nuclear posturing in all its forms, including Operation Dropshot, a pre-emptive first-strike plan aimed at the Soviets that involved 300 nuclear weapons.

​“When your opponent is down, son, don’t help him up. Step on his neck.” Mushroom Cloud by Thomas Yeggy is the most delicious form of literary red meat for those who cannot get enough serious fiction to read in the military, science, and history genres. Yeggy clearly knows a great deal about the politics that gave rise to a period when an arms race was ratcheting up faster than most agencies knew what to do with, and about multiple branches of physics. The writing style leans heavily on dialogue that transitions between several point of view characters, including, but definitely not limited to, Dr. Albert Einstein, President Truman, and even Stalin. Most of the technical aspects are written as dialogue and readers who have a low tolerance for the disposal of swaths of information in monologue format will be weeded out almost immediately. Yeggy weaves an interesting fly-on-the-wall sequence to the arc of the novel and Caleb does become a well-developed character, and a welcome one at that, against the backdrop of a textbook account of American history.

Jamie Michele

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