Gretchen Heefner's "The Missile Next Door" gives a nice background on the Minuteman missiles and their widespread deployment in the upper Midwest and Western states. While I clearly remember the Cold War and the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, the details about the location, extent, and how the missiles came to be buried in rural areas in these States is not a topic I'd ever thought about very much. So from that perspective, I found there were some interesting tidbits in the book, just not enough to keep me fully engrossed.

One interesting question the book does make you think about, is how did the government & military convince farmers and ranchers across the heartland of the Country to give up parcels of their property for placement of these missiles. In today's lawsuit crazy and "not in my backyard" era, when people agree they need services, as long as those power plants or other necessities of daily life are placed in somebody else's neighborhood, it seems miraculous that these weapons ever were put in place. Knowing you're living in the cross-hairs should war break out, or even in peace, living with nuclear weapons in their neighborhood, is remarkable given today's mindset. Those issues, along with the high cost of the missile program and the Cold War are things Heefner does highlight. Of course, not everyone was pleased by the placement of the missiles, and many grew dissatisfied with the government handling of the dismantling of the silos, and those personal stories are included in her book. Whether or not the political leanings of people in these heartland States, tending to support the defense spending, but distrustful of large government has any roots in the minuteman missile program from fifty years ago is not easy to conclude, but I can see the author leaning this way.
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This book covers the history of the Minuteman missile the west and mid-western United States. Focus is on the ranchers and farmers who had Minuteman silos installed on their property. The book discusses the impact of the missile and Air Force on the local communities and economy. This an interesting read, if you are interested in the history of missiles or Cold War History. This book highlights another example of how the US government has taken advantage of citizens in the name of “national security.” ( )

The installation and maintenance for over three decades of 1,000 Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles over the Great Plains and western Missouri between the early 1960s and early 1990s has been the subject of very few academic studies. The author thus attempts to meet a genuine historical need. A major concern in the first half of the book is an attempt to understand why farmers and ranchers accepted the forced sale of a 2-acre plot for each missile in the middle of a field or pasture and sometimes near the owner’s dwelling. Heefer seems not to understand that before Vietnam, Watergate, and Reagan, many Americans trusted their government, and especially the military, to a considerably greater degree than today. Moreover, Americans of that era were simply more accustomed to making personal sacrifices for the good of family, community and nation. In the early 1960s, especially in rural areas, local leaders and opinion-makers were often themselves veterans of World War II, who had personal experience in making sacrifices in defense of the nation.
She notes that there was little public attention to the issue of the missile fields as prime targets in a thermonuclear exchange. One presumes the Russians understood what the author ignores. If the Russians launched an ICBM first strike and the American radar stations in northern Canada functioned properly, then the Minuteman missiles would have been launched before Russian missiles could have arrived. Why would a rational enemy want to target empty silos? The Air Force bases themselves would surely have been targeted, but perhaps not the missile silos.
Most of the author’s attention focuses on western South Dakota and the missiles managed from Ellsworth Air Force Base. She uses this area as a case study in both public acceptance of American militarism and, as the Cold War advanced, in the growing use of military activity as a kind of economic welfare for specified communities and for propping up the national economy. It is also a case study in the public’s reaction to the environmental issues that accompanied building and decommissioning the missile silos.
Heefner gets an A+ for concern with fundamentally important issues, and her endnotes are filled with bibliographical references that will be of great value to future scholars. But the author’s treatment of essential issues can seem brief, shallow, facile, and anecdotal. I can ignore a howling misuse of English, but I cannot ignore a basic factual error concerning the structure of the American government. The author tells us on page 37 that “the War Department existed only in wartime”. The United States Department of War existed continuously from 1789 to 1947.
In short, if you want to know about how the Minuteman missiles came about and were received by the Americans who had to live next door to them, read this book. But don’t expect more than a case study by a younger scholar can offer. ( )