Books like Arc Light

I've read this book twice (gave it a decade between reads) and my results did not vary. There's a lot of good writing here and he renders a matter of fact approach to a limited nuclear war scenario. One only needs to read his account of a nuclear strike on an airbase from the perspective of the people in a nearby hangar to see how this writer can shine. The prose is decent and the characters are (mostly) believable and sympathetic.What rubbed me was his shoddy treatment of the larger picture. He failed to capture the actual horror of a situation like the one he proposes insofar as its certain effects on both society and environment. It seemed as if the affected areas were isolated spots of hell and everyplace else was pretty much okay. Cities with hundreds of thousands living in them take numerous airbusts but the novel speaks of this as if it were only an airbase or a chain of missile silos that were hit and the obvious repercussions of what would be millions in need of medical care and material support are pretty much avoided. It all falls into a black hole while the good ol' USA prosecutes a land war in Asia, able to fight a prolonged offensive campaign unfazed by what would be a complete breakdown of the production and supply chain that would result from the scenario as it's proposed. Unbelievably, the US expeditionary forces in east Asia aren't simply decimated despite being supplied from the sea. Such a stretch is the product of either ubernationalism or the shameless necessities of plot. I was also stuck by his somewhat comical ideas of what life in a Marine Corps unit must be like. Contrary to Mr. Harry's suggestion, grunts don't tend to address one another with ridiculous nicknames.At least he didn't have soppy delusions about what an opposed landing against a Soviet force might have looked like.Some aspects of this book rate a 4. Others rate a 2. I'll settle at 3.