?A primer on nuclear armtwisting. On Escalation is not designed to shock but to instruct--to show how we can use our atomic weapons and still, perhaps, come out alive.... Kahn constructs an escalation ladder by which nations can work their way up a series of forty-four graduated rungs from ordinary cold war unpleasantness to all out nuclear oblivion. With the aid of analogies from history and hypothetical confrontations at various points along the ladder, Kahn demonstrates some of the options that are open in the game of chickenmanship.?-New York Review of Books