Description

A Times History Book of the Year 2022

From the 1 bestselling historian Max Hastings the heartstopping story of the missile crisis Daily Telegraph

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union During those weeks the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation

Max Hastingss graphic new history tells the story from the viewpoints of national leaders Russian officers Cuban peasants American pilots and British disarmers Max Hastings deploys his accustomed blend of eyewitness interviews archive documents and diaries White House tape recordings topdown analysis first to paint wordportraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castros Cuba Nikita Khrushchevs Russia and Kennedys America then to describe the nailbiting Thirteen Days in which Armageddon beckoned
Hastings began researching this book believing that he was exploring a past event from twentieth century history He is as shocked as are millions of us around the world to discover that the rape of Ukraine gives this narrative a hitherto unimaginable twentyfirst century immediacy We may be witnessing the onset of a new Cold War between nucleararmed superpowers
To contend with todays threat which Hastings fears will prove enduring it is critical to understand how sixty years ago the world survived its last glimpse into the abyss Only by fearing the worst he argues can our leaders hope to secure the survival of the planet