"A minor classic in its laconic, spare, compelling evocation by a participant of the shifting moods and maneuvers of the most dangerous moment in human history." —Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. During the thirteen days in October 1962 when the United States confronted the Soviet Union over its installation of missiles in Cuba, few people shared the behind-the-scenes story as it is told here by the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy. In this unique account, he describes each of the participants during the sometimes hour-to-hour negotiations, with particular attention to the actions and views of his brother, President John F. Kennedy. In a new foreword, the distinguished historian and Kennedy adviser Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., discusses the book's enduring importance and the significance of new information about the crisis that has come to light, especially from the Soviet Union.
A resissue of the gripping and bestselling account of the perilous showdown between the United States and Soviet Union in 1962. Includes a new Foreword by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Never has the world come as close to the catastrophic destruction that nearly came to pass in October 1962. The United States and the Soviet Union, uneasy allies in World War II but Cold War rivals after the defeat of Germany, squared off over the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. This launched 13 days of tense negotiations between the two nations, as both President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev prepared for the possibility of nuclear war. While neither man wanted a war and understood the potential consequences, the situation was not merely in their hands. Khrushchev faced pressure from Soviets to take a hardline stance against the U.S., while Kennedy faced the real possibility of a military coup if he did not follow the strong recommendations of his military advisors to destroy the missiles. As Attorney General Robert Kennedy said, "The 10 or 12 people who participated in all these discussions were bright and energetic people. We had perhaps amongst the most able in the country and if any one of a half a dozen of them were president, the world would have been very likely plunged into catastrophic war." Read more about the history of this short crisis in this book. HistoryCaps is an imprint of BookCaps Study Guides. With each book, a brief period of history is recapped. We publish a wide array of topics (from baseball and music to science and philosophy), so check our growing catalogue regularly to see our newest books.
“Marshals irrefutable evidence to succinctly demolish the mythic version of the crisis . . . sober analysis.” —The Atlantic This book exposes the misconceptions, half-truths, and outright lies that have shaped the still dominant but largely mythical version of what happened in the White House during those harrowing two weeks of secret Cuban missile crisis deliberations. More than a half-century after the event, it is surely time to demonstrate, once and for all, that Robert F. Kennedy’s Thirteen Days and the personal memoirs of other ExComm members cannot be taken seriously as historically accurate accounts of the ExComm meetings. This book, from the first historian to listen to and evaluate the White House tapes made during the crisis, does exactly that. “Stern is not alone in questioning the precision of the transcripts offered, but he has made the most painstaking attempt to clarify what was really said and done.” —Journal of American History
Describes what was going on in the Oval Office as the highly-charged events leading up the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded, as well as the immediate aftermath, based on secret recordings made by President Kennedy.
"The definitive history.…With his masterly book, Mr. Plokhy has sounded a warning bell." — The Economist A harrowing account of the Cuban missile crisis and how the US and USSR came to the brink of nuclear apocalypse. Nearly thirty years after the end of the Cold War, today’s world leaders are abandoning disarmament treaties, building up their nuclear arsenals, and exchanging threats of nuclear strikes. To survive this new atomic age, we must relearn the lessons of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War: the Cuban missile crisis. Serhii Plokhy’s Nuclear Folly offers an international perspective on the crisis, tracing the tortuous decision-making that produced and then resolved it, which involved John Kennedy and his advisers, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and their commanders on the ground. In breathtaking detail, Plokhy vividly recounts the young JFK being played by the canny Khrushchev; the hotheaded Castro willing to defy the USSR and threatening to align himself with China; the Soviet troops on the ground clearing jungle foliage in the tropical heat, and desperately trying to conceal nuclear installations on Cuba, which were nonetheless easily spotted by U-2 spy planes; and the hair-raising near misses at sea that nearly caused a Soviet nuclear-armed submarine to fire its weapons. More often than not, the Americans and Soviets misread each other, operated under false information, and came perilously close to nuclear catastrophe. Despite these errors, nuclear war was ultimately avoided for one central reason: fear, and the realization that any escalation on either the Soviets’ or the Americans’ part would lead to mutual destruction. Drawing on a range of Soviet archival sources, including previously classified KGB documents, as well as White House tapes, Plokhy masterfully illustrates the drama and anxiety of those tense days, and provides a way for us to grapple with the problems posed in our present day.
In Dark Beyond Darkness, James Blight and janet Lang, among the world’s foremost authorities on the Cuban missile crisis, synthesize the findings from their thirty-year project on the most dangerous moment in recorded history. Authoritative, accessible, and written with their usual flair and wit, DBD is the first book to take readers deeply inside the experience and calculations of Fidel Castro, who was willing to martyr Cuba if his new Russian ally would nuke the U.S. and destroy it. Blight and Lang have established that in October 1962, the world was on the brink of Armageddon, and that we escaped by luck. Their history is scary but unimpeachably accurate: we just barely escaped the cold and the dark in October 1962. Their history also comes with a warning: we are currently at risk not only of Armageddon-fast, in a war between superpowers, but Armageddon-in-Slow-Motion (the result a climate catastrophe following a regional nuclear war), and from Armageddon, Oops! (a conflict sparked by an accident, which is misinterpreted, and ends in nuclear war). Drawing on the insights of poets, musicians and novelists, as well as climate scientists and agronomists, they show the terrible risk we run by refusing to abolish nuclear weapons.
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Prometheus comes the first effort to set the Cuban Missile Crisis, with its potential for nuclear holocaust, in a wider historical narrative of the Cold War—how such a crisis arose, and why at the very last possible moment it didn't happen. In this groundbreaking look at the Cuban Missile Crisis, Martin Sherwin not only gives us a riveting sometimes hour-by-hour explanation of the crisis itself, but also explores the origins, scope, and consequences of the evolving place of nuclear weapons in the post-World War II world. Mining new sources and materials, and going far beyond the scope of earlier works on this critical face-off between the United States and the Soviet Union—triggered when Khrushchev began installing missiles in Cuba at Castro's behest—Sherwin shows how this volatile event was an integral part of the wider Cold War and was a consequence of nuclear arms. Gambling with Armageddon looks in particular at the original debate in the Truman Administration about using the Atomic Bomb; the way in which President Eisenhower relied on the threat of massive retaliation to project U.S. power in the early Cold War era; and how President Kennedy, though unprepared to deal with the Bay of Pigs debacle, came of age during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Here too is a clarifying picture of what was going on in Khrushchev's Soviet Union. Martin Sherwin has spent his career in the study of nuclear weapons and how they have shaped our world. Gambling with Armegeddon is an outstanding capstone to his work thus far.
