To understand how we got to where we are today, with a POTUS dedicated to dismantling the US nuclear arsenal while madmen in Pyongyang and Teheran - or are they mad??? - work to acquire thermonuclear weapons and threaten by their actions to pass tactical nukes to terror groups, it helps to know how close we came - or how close some thought we came - to serious nuclear annihilation during the Cold War.

That's the theme of David Hoffman's 2009 book "The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy". Hoffman, a WaPo investigative reporter, strongly favors disarmament through arms control treaties. But do the remedies favored by either the Left or the Right during the Cold War address the threat we face today?