Upon its first appearance in 1967, this best-selling "secret government report" sparked immediate debate among journalists and scholars with its disturbingly convincing claim: a condition of "permanent peace" at the end of the Cold War would threaten our nation's economic and social stability. Although finally identified as an antimilitarist hoax by writer/editor Leonard Lewin, who conceived and launched the book with a consortium of peace movement intellectuals including future Nation editors Victor Navasky and Richard Lingeman, novelist E. L. Doctorow, and economist John Kenneth Galbraith, Iron Mountain would eventually take on a life of its own.

Long out of print, the Report suddenly reappeared in "bootleg" editions more than twenty years after the original publication. In a manner never foreseen by the books' creators, it was now being read as a "bible" by the militias of the radical right -- a bizarre reversal that returns this haunting satire to the spotlight and raises uncomfortable questions about the changing nature of today's political culture.

This new edition of Report From Iron Mountain features an introduction by Victor Navasky, an afterword by Leonard Lewin, and a collection of articles, assembled here as "The Iron Mountain Affair," that appeared on the book's original publication -- each a revealing piece of the still-developing puzzle that has grown up around one of the most engaging and resilient works of political comment of our time.

[The Book][The Author] [The Players][A Bizarre History]
[Selected Excerpts][Press: Then & Now] [Conspiratorial Links]
[Fresh Ink][Chat]