Hostile Waters

During the Cold War, Soviet nuclear submarines tirelessly patrolled the Atlantic. Their missiles took aim at Washington, New York, and other major American cities. But they were also fairly low-tech contraptions, at least in comparison to the sophisticated U.S. subs that quietly tracked them. In 1986, one of these Soviet vessels nearly suffered a meltdown not far from Bermuda in what might have been a worse-than-Chernobyl accident. Hostile Waters tells this story more like a novel than a textbook, but also makes good use of declassified material and personal interviews. In his brief foreword, Tom Clancy calls it "one of the most fascinating true submarine stores I have ever encountered"--high praise from the man who brought us The Hunt for Red October.