The Report from Iron Mountain

The Report from Iron Mountain is a 1967 anti-war satire written by Leonard C. Lewin. The book purports to be a leaked report authored by a Special Study Group tasked by the Kennedy Administration with planning the transition from a wartime economy and assess the potential social impacts of a "condition of general world peace." It details the group's analyses, which concludes that world peace could cause the United States to collapse; war, or some alternative external threat, is necessary for social stability, the Study Group finds, and recommends the establishment of "a permanent War/Peace Research Agency" to improve "the effectiveness of [war's] major stabilizing functions" and to plan substitutes for war should "a viable general peace" emerge. The book became a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into fifteen languages.