House of War [Click the title to buy this book] by James Carroll
As a young boy, James Carroll saw the Pentagon as his
playhouse—“the largest playhouse in the world.” While his father
worked late, as a high-ranking intelligence official in the Air
Force, Carroll would roam the empty corridors, sliding down the
ramps connecting the building’s five concentric rings; running
from water fountain to water fountain, drinking from as many as
he could; examining the war memorabilia tucked in various
corners; and getting lost in the labyrinthine vastness. Later
on, as a seminarian and peace protester, the building came to
mean something quite different to him: it was the brain center
of the hated Vietnam War, and, even more ominous, of the nuclear
madness that threatened the human race. In House of War, a book
that is part history, part memoir, and part polemic, Carroll
sets out to tell the story of “the Building”—a sprawling
bureaucracy, Carroll argues, that is not only more powerful than
the civilians who would seek