A CAPITAL CALAMITY:
Escapades in Doomsday Land—A Novel

"Serge Willoughby just wanted to make money and have fun. He didn’t mean to start World War III." So begins this rollicking debut novel, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Fred Kaplan, about a cynical defense consultant whose mischief accidentally triggers a war with China. Now, along with the CIA director (who’s also a bitter ex-girlfriend), a former school chum now an NSA hacker, a garrulous Wall Street tycoon-turned-secretary of defense, and a vivacious journalist (who may or may not be flirting with him for a big story), Willoughby, jarred completely out of character, has to save the world.

Priase for A Capital Calamity:

“A joyful romp! Just when we need satire more than ever, one of our best political commentators has morphed into a brilliant and irresistible comic novelist.”
JOE WEISBERG, creator of The Americans

“Fred Kaplan’s new book gives us comedy, treachery, ideas, and shrewd cultural anthropology—all against a page-turner background of the highest-stakes international showdown. It’s like the cast of Veep in a Tom Clancy book. Readers will learn a lot, and have fun while doing so.”
JAMES FALLOWS, former chief White House speechwriter, author of National Defense and other books

“The Catch-22 of our day! A Capital Calamity is a wry, chuckle-filled look at how one savvy insider schlub starts a war. It’s a genius work. I loved it!
MALCOLM NANCE, former Navy intelligence officer, author of The Plot to Hack America

“Kaplan pulls back the curtain hiding how Washington really works in this only slightly exaggerated, darkly humorous look at ‘national security’ and ‘unthinkable’ nuclear war. Sometimes you can tell more truth through fiction, and this true fiction is fun.”
RICHARD A. CLARKE, former White House counterterrorism chief, author of Against All Enemies and The Scorpion’s Gate

“Who knew? Fred Kaplan is not just a brilliant reporter and national security analyst but a comic novelist, too. This is a quick, funny, and scary read.”
JONATHAN ALTER, author of American Reckoning: Inside Trump’s Trial—and My Own

"Kaplan has been the undisputed master of nuclear knowledge ever since he wrote The Wizards of Armageddon in 1983. Suffice to say, anything Fred Kaplan writes, I read. His new novel, A Capital Calamity, is very dark and very funny, peopled by characters Kaplan has no doubt met along the way. Situations that have likely kept him up at night, wondering: what if...?. Five stars for this cautionary tale.”
ANNIE JACOBSEN, author of Nuclear War: A Scenario

“I inhaled the deliciously fun A Capital Calamity in two sittings. It’s got a deviously winding plot that keeps throwing hilarious curveballs and kept me totally hooked.”
CLIVE THOMPSON, author of Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World

“A Capital Calamity is a terrific read. It’s incredibly funny, steeped in the intellectual history of defense and nuclear policy, and an acerbic portrait of Washington’s many contradictions.”
ANKIT PANDA, host of “Thinking the Unthinkable” podcast; author of The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon

“This wonderful novel captures the craziness of the national security community and all its denizens perfectly. The plot is delicious, the characters thoroughly enjoyable, and while it is certainly a very funny book, it also touches on some very serious underlying issues. I do hope someone makes it into a movie."
DAVID N. SCHWARTZ, author of The Last Man Who Knew Everything: The Life and Times of Enrico Fermi, Father of the Nuclear Age

“A real page-turner…Fun…You can’t put it down.”
MIKE PESCA, host, The Gist podcast

“A Jane Austen meets Dr. Strangelove comedy of DC manners… It’s very, very funny—and serious.”
JEFFREY LEWIS, host, ArmsControlWonk podcast; author of The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States: A Speculative Novel

“Imagine Dr. Strangelove meets Jonathan Swift meets Catch-22… A Capital Calamity is a real page-turner, crammed with richly drawn characters… Clever, funny, and scary—satire as it should be.”
ROBIN LUSTIG, former BBC anchor, author of Is Anything Happening? My Life As a Newsman

“Highly recommended: A Capital Calamity, a smart, funny, edgy satire by the great Fred Kaplan that reads like a modern-day Dr. Strangelove. Read it and weep (with laughter).”
TIM WEINER, author of Legacy of Ashes, Enemies, The Folly and the Glory

"Watch the classic film Dr. Strangelove today, and you’ll likely feel nostalgia rather than the satirical chill Stanley Kubrick intended. For an updated formula of that cocktail of biting humor and existential dread, get a copy of Fred Kaplan’s new novel A Capital Calamity.”
IAN BREMMER, President, Eurasia Group

“I had such a good time reading Fred Kaplan’s new novel, A Capital Calamity… Not every journalist can transition to fiction, but the plotting is terrific. The style might recall Ross Thomas and something of Brian Garfield’s Hopscotch. Recommended for fans of espionage and political thrillers.”
ETHAN IVERSON (jazz pianist and astute analyst of noir fiction), “Transitional Technology” Substack