Match BookNuclear War: A Scenario
Annie Jacobsen
2024 · 373 pages · Narrative nonfiction
How it reads
Nuclear War: A Scenario is narrative nonfiction (geopolitical disaster scenario, specifically), and its dominant mood is tense. The suspense is the kind you feel in your shoulders. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.
It's set in several locations, in the future, told through letters, documents or mixed forms. Its central concerns are war, power and politics and survival. In weight it's heavy and literary — denser, more serious, and more demanding of you.
It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending is dark — no rescue, no neat bow. At 373 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.
Pick it up if…
- you're in the mood for something tense
- you want a book that pulls you through
- you want something to chew on
Maybe not if…
- you need something cosy or heartwarming
- you need a happy ending
All 15 dimensions
- Genre
- narrative nonfiction
- Author gender
- female
- Author experience
- prolific veteran
- Setting: place
- multiple locations
- Setting: time
- future
- Mood / feeling
- tense
- Pace
- fast paced
- Tone / weight
- heavy and literary
- Length
- medium
- Narrative style
- letters, documents or mixed forms
- Publication era
- new release
- Popularity
- well known
- Series vs standalone
- standalone
- Themes
- war, power and politics, survival
- Ending style
- dark
What these mean: the 15 dimensions of a book.
Books with a similar reading
The closest books in Match Book's catalogue across the same dimensions, and what they share.
- Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First CenturyDorothy RobertsShares: narrative nonfiction, tense mood, heavy and literary tone, set in multiple locations
- I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State KillerMichelle McNamaraShares: narrative nonfiction, tense mood, heavy and literary tone, fast paced
- The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed ItScott PattersonShares: narrative nonfiction, tense mood, fast paced, dark ending
- An Atheist Primer: Did You Know All the Gods Came from the Same Place?Madalyn Murray O'HairShares: narrative nonfiction, tense mood, heavy and literary tone, fast paced
- Fear: Trump in the White HouseBob WoodwardShares: narrative nonfiction, tense mood, heavy and literary tone, fast paced
The Light BrigadeKameron HurleyShares: tense mood, heavy and literary tone, fast paced, set in multiple locations
Appears in
Find a copy
Reviews on Goodreads ↗Match Book earns a commission on purchases made through these links, at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, Match Book earns from qualifying purchases.