"When mistakes are made with nuclear reactors and warheads, the consequences are often scary indeed. In her first book, journalist Barbara Moran exhibits dogged research and an eye for detail in reconstructing one such incident.... Moran, whose background is in television documentary production, takes a cinematic approach, describing everything from the Catalan shrimp fishermen who rescued the U.S. fliers parachuting from the massive plane to the contents of President Lyndon Johnson's breakfast (melon, chipped beef and hot tea) when he got news of the accident at 7:05 a.m. Moran spent years collecting this wealth of detail, interviewing the Air Force officers who survived the crash and exhuming every declassified document she could find on the topic. She even accompanied Air Force officials on a midair refueling (the proximate cause of the accident) so that she could explain that difficult maneuver. Her efforts yield an often riveting tale.... Moran captures some of the flavor of the Cold War, including the Air Force's determination to keep part of its nuclear arsenal perpetually airborne for fear of a surprise attack. She recounts with some humor how, in the midst of the recovery effort, Johnson went to the White House screening room to watch Thunderball, the latest James Bond film, in which the evil "Spectre" organization crashes a NATO plane loaded with two nuclear bombs into the ocean, retrieves the bombs underwater and holds them for ransom."—Washington Post