The Seventh Power

by James Mills

Stated first edition. A near fine copy in a near fine dust jacket. Dust soiling to the edges of the book's upper page block.

236 pages, Hardcover

First published October 27, 1976

About the author

James Mills is an American novelist, screenwriter and prize-winning journalist.

Mills wrote two New York Times bestsellers, Report to the Commissioner, a novel, and , a study of international narcotics trafficking. As a result, he testified before a panel of the House Foreign Affairs Committee as an expert. His books The Panic in Needle Park and Report to the Commissioner were later made into major motion pictures.

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mid-1970s book about college kids who decide to make an atomic bomb. Heavily derivative of John McPhee's _The Curve of Binding Energy_ when it comes to technical details. The kids build the bomb as part of a cock-eyed scheme to help poor African countries blackmail rich Arab countries for food aid. Hijinks ensue. In the end, the story doesn't quite add up -- the motives of the kids are largely unbelievable, the reaction by the authorities seem largely implausible, and the ease with which the bomb is assembled seems unlikely even if one accepts the "simple bombs are not too hard to design" thesis (as advocated by Theodore Taylor in the aforementioned McPhee book, among other place) as essentially valid. In the end, I also think that history has shown Mills' essential thesis -- that the US government would not take fissile material safeguards to be serious, even if they had been shown that people could indeed steal them quite easily -- to be quite false (even by the time the novel came out, significant changes had already been made in securing domestic fissile material). An interesting reflection of historical anxieties related to the 1970s safeguards debate, but not a great book by any standard.