Resurrection Day, Brendan DuBois (1999)

This novel depicts a world ten years after the Cuban Missile Crisis was the start of an all-out nuclear war between the US and the USSR. Now the USSR is in ruins, the US has lost NYC, DC, Omaha (home of SAC) and suffered various other collateral damage. The US is now an impoverished country dependant on the slightly gleeful charity of our former allies.

While the US makes a pretense of remaining a democracy, it is really a one-party dictatorship under control of the military. Our hero Carl works at the Boston Globe, where all the news that prints is vetted by a military censor in the interests of 'national security'.

Cringing under the necessity of accepting charity from Britain, deeply ashamed of the enormous death-toll of the war, the only thing that keeps American pride intact is our still-existing arsenal of nuclear weapons, which the entire rest of the world wants to see destroyed.

The murder of an old veteran of the Kennedy administration sets Carl on the trail of the true story of the start of the war, putting him at odds with an amazing assortment of factions who do not want the truth to emerge.

When this book was written in '99, it was a far-out can't-happen-here fantasy of alternate-history. Now, in the increasingly Orwellian Ashcroft's America, where the US Vice President can blame the press for his own mistakes with impunity, it becomes a cautionary tale. Read it and weep.

I include a link to another book, ALSO called Resurrection Day, from '01, which I haven't read, but which looks equally interesting. I've added it to my Amazon wishlist; if someone wants to buy it for me, I'll review it as well, heh.