SOURCE: "Science and the Bomb," in New York Times Book Review, May 3, 1959, p. 29.

In the following review, Sullivan complains that the prose is limp and the characterization is weak in Buck's Command the Morning.

No question about it, since the writhing, mushroom-shaped cloud first rose over the original burst of The Bomb, we have all lived in a changed world. Regardless of race, sex, religion, age or income bracket, we are all instantly subject to reduction to cosmic dust. The means seem to be at hand to crack this old planet, like an aged croquet ball, right in two. And ironically, wonderfully, we possess these means out of our innate tendency to know and capacity to learn and find out and discover.

What Pearl Buck writes about in Command the Morning is inexpressibly important. This novel deals with the making of The Bomb and the dropping of The...