Editing Jonathan Schell (section)

==Reception and legacy==
In 1967, [[John Mecklin]] wrote in ''[[The New York Times Book Review]]'' that ''The Village of Ben Suc'', Jonathan Schell's first book, was "written with a skill that many a veteran war reporter will envy, eloquently sensitive, subtly clothed in an aura of detachment, understated, extraordinarily persuasive."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Mecklin |first1=John |date=1967-10-29 |title=Moving Day in Vietnam |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1967/10/29/121515569.html |url-access=subscription |department=Book Review |work=The New York Times |at=sec. 7, p. 3 |access-date=2025-01-20 |via=TimesMachine |postscript=none}}; quoted in {{cite news |last1=Johnson |first1=George |date=1988-02-28 |title=New & Noteworthy |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/28/books/new-noteworthy.html |url-access=limited |department=Book Review |work=The New York Times |at=sec. 7, p. 34 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404085649/https://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/28/books/new-noteworthy.html |archive-date=2023-04-04}}</ref>

Reviewing ''The Military Half: An Account of Destruction in Quang Ngai and Quang Tin'', journalist and historian [[Jonathan Mirsky]] wrote in ''[[The Nation]]'': "I know no book which has made me angrier and more ashamed."<ref name="Fox2014" />

On its publication in 1982, ''[[The Fate of the Earth]]'' was described by [[Kai T. Erikson|Kai Erikson]] in ''The New York Times Book Review'' as "a work of enormous force" and "an event of profound historical moment{{nbsp}}... [I]n the end, it accomplishes what no other work has managed to do in the 37 years of the nuclear age. It compels us{{em dash}}and compel is the right word{{em dash}}to confront head on the nuclear peril in which we all find ourselves."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Erickson |first1=Kai |date=1982-04-11 |title=A Horror Beyond Comprehension |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/11/books/a-horror-beyond-comprehension.html <!--Former URL at https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/specials/schell-fate.html--> |url-access=limited |department=Book Review |work=The New York Times |at=sec. 7, p. 3 & 16 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240404085021/https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/11/books/a-horror-beyond-comprehension.html |archive-date=2024-04-04}}</ref> The book also reflected on the end of love, politics and art, and the [[Human extinction|annihilation of humans as a species]]. [[CBS News]] journalist [[Walter Cronkite]] called the book "one of the most important works of recent years", praise that helped to solidify the book's commercial success.<ref name="Bernstein2014" />

In an 'Author's Note' to his collection of five short stories entitled ''[[Einstein's Monsters]]'' (1987), the Anglo-American writer [[Martin Amis]] said this about Schell's writings regarding nuclear weapons: "And throughout I am grateful to Jonathan Schell, for ideas and imagery. I don't know why he is our best writer on this subject. He is not the most stylish, perhaps, nor the most knowledgeable. But he is the most decorous and, I think, the most pertinent. He has moral accuracy; he is unerring."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Amis |first1=Martin |year=1988 |orig-date=first published in 1987 |title=Einstein's Monsters |publication-place=London |publisher=Penguin Books |page=ix |isbn=978-0-14-010315-1}}</ref>

Writing in ''[[Foreign Affairs]]'' magazine, however, David Greenberg called ''The Fate of the Earth'' an "overwrought doomsday polemic."<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Greenberg |first1=David |url=https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/empire-strikes-out-why-star-wars-did-not-end-cold-war <!--former URL at http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/55872/david-greenberg/the-empire-strikes-out-why-star-wars-did-not-end-the-cold-war--> |url-access=subscription |title=The Empire Strikes Out: Why Star Wars Did Not End the Cold War |magazine=Foreign Affairs |date=2000-03-01 |access-date=2025-01-15}}</ref> Two decades later, in ''[[Slate (magazine)|Slate]]'', [[Michael Kinsley]] characterized it as "an overheated stew of the obvious and the idiotic" and suggested it was "the silliest book ever taken seriously by serious people."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Kinsley |first1=Michael |date=1999-03-07 |title=Gratuitous Meritocracy |url=https://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/readme/1999/03/_3.html |website=Slate |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241226042135/https://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/readme/1999/03/_3.html |archive-date=2024-12-26}}</ref> The ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' noted that "some reviewers found Schell's book shrill and overstated."<ref name="LAT2014" />

Reviewing ''[[The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger]]'' in ''The New York Times Book Review'' in 2007, [[Martin Walker (reporter)|Martin Walker]] characterized it as "a passionate and cogently argued case for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons{{nbsp}}... There is little in Schell's book that is new, but his careful assembly of the available evidence will scare the pants off most readers. And so it should."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Walker |first1=Martin |date=2007-11-25 |title=Smoking Guns and Mushroom Clouds |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/books/review/Walker-t.html |url-access=limited |department=Book Review |work=The New York Times |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240610093204/https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/books/review/Walker-t.html |archive-date=2024-06-10}}</ref>

In 2019, philosopher [[Akeel Bilgrami]] described Schell as "one of the great public intellectuals of our time,"<ref name=bilgrami2019>{{cite book |last1=Bilgrami |first1=Akeel |title=Nature and Value |date=2019 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-55090-1 |pages=ix–xvi |doi=10.7312/bilg19462-001 |chapter=Preface|s2cid=243015528 }}</ref>{{rp|x}} and described ''The Fate of the Earth'' as a "rightly celebrated classic".<ref name=bilgrami2019/>{{rp|x}}