Maybe I'm just getting used to the format now but this Brassey's series seems to get better and better with every new offering. The latest in the series gives the reader a succinct and up to the minute pen-picture of all the horrors of NBC warfare in sufficient detail to make a reviewer like me thank his lucky stars that he is now an 'armchair warrior'! All the awfulness of such warfare is covered - the chemical agents, the biological agents, the nuclear weapons, plus the protection, detection and early warning systems. In addition there is a useful short background history at the beginning and some thoughts at the end, which were particularly telling, especially the potential terrorist threats against civilian targets which as the writers correctly say are now far more possible thanks to the ending of the Cold War. The type of work which the UN monitoring teams are trying to do in Iraq and the Intransigence of Saddam Hussein as he deliberately prevents them from finding out what horrors he is preparing, become all the more serious when one reads of the potential horrors like Anthrax plague and Yellow Rain.

George Forty

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