Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi. The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. 387 pp. ISBN 0-674-01714-5, $26.95.

When Herman Kahn published On Thermonuclear War in 1960, heshocked readers by thinking the unthinkable, that is, by visualizingthe effects of various levels of preparedness and civil defenseon the rates of survival in the event of a devastating thermonuclearattack on the United States. As he did so, however, Kahn cloakedhis futurological scenarios in a strange mix of mathematicalcalculation, gallows humor, and a tendency to ignore some ofthe hideous consequences of thermonuclear