Nuking the Moon was another book I stumbled across thanks to my wife, who checked it out from the library and foolishly left it where I could see it. The title, naturally, grabbed my attention, and I welcomed a more lighthearted distraction from the heavier fare I'm currently working my way through, of which more later.
Written by an intelligence e pert and curator of the International Spy Museum, Nuking the Moon takes the interesting approach of documenting the most ambitious and unbelievable exploits that didn't actually happen. That's not to say their fictional, but merely plans that never made it past the drawing board stage, or at least never saw fruition.
Houghton knows his stuff, and the stories are told with rich detail and obvious enthusiasm. His humor can feel a little forced at times, but the “dad joke" aesthetic seems deliberate, and was ultimately a better choice, given the material, than trying to document such exploits as warming a nuclear mine with live chickens using dry academic prose.