"To vomit here, in this impeccable GI elevator with the officer-operator and the President leaning comfortably against the wall and the secretary listening to his words, and the wooden major standing at an apparently easy attention, would be too much" (p. 60).

"Buck looked up at Mrs. Johnson and smiled thinly. Her memory was said to be limitless, her knowledge encyclopedic, her antagonism fatal" (p. 63).

"When one descended into the deeply buried command post and personnel quarters there was the sensation of entering an ingenious collective coffin" (p. 72).

"'To Swenson we listen and if he gives advice we take it all,'" the President said. "'Unless I tell you otherwise, whatever Swenson says is what I think'" (p. 130).

"'This thing of piling bombs on bombs and missiles on missiles when we both have a capacity to overkill after surviving a first strike is just silly'" (p. 147).

"Did men look...