[1] The book purports to be a leaked report authored by a Special Study Group tasked by the Kennedy Administration to plan the transition from a wartime economy and assess the potential social impacts of a "condition of general world peace.

The idea for the report came from Victor Navasky and other editors of Monocle, an American political satire magazine, after reading a newspaper account about a stock market decline attributed to a "peace scare.

"[2] Leonard Lewin wrote the book with the help of the economist John Kenneth Galbraith and three Monocle editors Marvin Kitman, Richard Lingeman, and Victor Navasky.

[7] According to The New York Times, "Neither side would reveal the full terms of the settlement, but Lewin received more than a thousand copies of the bootlegged version.

[9] The book's forward describes how the Special Study Group's last meeting before drafting the final report was held at Iron Mountain (hence the name).

[1] The book is a satiric parody of Rand Corporation projects which summarizes the results of a two-and-a-half-year study and recommends maintaining a state of permanent war.

The main part of the book examines the non-military economic, political, sociological, cultural, and scientific functions of war and the problems that these raise for the transition to peace.

The report next suggests some substitutes for the non-military functions of war, including medical research, health care for all citizens, improved education, housing, public transportation, poverty reduction, and so forth, but ultimately notes that these do not answer the need for an external threat to maintain social stability.

The report suggests some alternative enemy could be manufactured, such as hostile space aliens or the threat of environmental pollution, which, the authors say, is not yet dire enough yet but could be "increased selectively for this purpose.

The latest edition of the Cambridge newspaper Varsity quotes the following (tape recorded) interchange: Interviewer: 'Are you aware of the identity of the author of Report from Iron Mountain?'

[22] In a remembrance of E. L. Doctorow published in 2015 in The Nation, Victor Navasky asserted his involvement in creating Report from Iron Mountain, naming Leonard Lewin as the main writer with "input" from economist John Kenneth Galbraith, two editors of the satirical magazine Monocle (Marvin Kitman and Richard Lingeman) and himself.