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Description
In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be sliding inexorably toward a nuclear conflict over the placement of missiles in Cuba. Veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has pored over previously untapped American, Soviet, and Cuban sources to produce the most authoritative book yet on the Cuban missile crisis. In his hour-by-hour chronicle of those near-fatal days, Dobbs reveals some startling new incidents that illustrate how close we came to Armageddon.
Here, for the first time, are gripping accounts of Khrushchev’s plan to destroy the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo; the accidental overflight of the Soviet Union by an American spy plane; the movement of Soviet nuclear warheads around Cuba during the tensest days of the crisis; the activities of CIA agents inside Cuba; and the crash landing of an American F-106 jet with a live nuclear weapon on board.
Dobbs takes us inside the White House and the Kremlin as Kennedy and Khrushchev—rational, intelligent men separated by an ocean of ideological suspicion—agonize over the possibility of war. He shows how these two leaders recognized the terrifying realities of the nuclear age while Castro—never swayed by conventional political considerations—demonstrated the messianic ambition of a man selected by history for a unique mission. As the story unfolds, Dobbs brings us onto the decks of American ships patrolling Cuba; inside sweltering Soviet submarines and missile units as they ready their warheads; and onto the streets of Miami, where anti-Castro exiles plot the dictator’s overthrow.
Based on exhaustive new research and told in breathtaking prose, here is a riveting account of history’s most dangerous hours, full of lessons for our time.
Customer reviews for 'One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War'
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One Minute to Midnight...
Extensive research and documentation of that research. Interesting insights to the personal actions of actors in this realp-life drama. One of those books that is hard to put down. For me a rare experience: I wrote the author my compliments and specific response. I recommend this book.
[Sunday, August 17, 2008]
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Doomsday Averted
This was a very good, day by day, in some cases minute by minute description of the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Certainly the topic has been done before, but Dobbs is a very thorough reporter and brings forth a lot of material I did not know about until now.
And this is an event I lived through. Dobbs makes the point that the "eyeball to eyeball" event of Russian ships turning around when they saw the American blockade was an exageration, that the ships were hundreds of miles apart. However, the book as a whole makes it seem like the world's two super powers were closer to going to war than I realized. When Kruschchev announced he would pull out the missiles on a Sunday, Kennedy had already authorized an air strike on the following Tuesday. We really were on the brink of a nuclear war.
Kennedy and Khruschev each come off as relatively level head political leaders dealing with a military leaders and systems poised to launch a nuclear war. Castro, not so much.
Dobbs does a masterful job of juggling events on a world wide canvas. The book moves seamlessly from scenes in Washington, Moscow, Havana, the missiles sites in Cuba, on board Soviet submarines, American U2 flights, including when an Alaskan based plane inadvertently goes over Soviet airspace.
The book is stronger on reportage than analysis. Not that the analysis is wrong headed, just that there is not really very much of it. Still, it was hard not to be impressed with the effort the Kennedy administration went to in their effort to establish that the weapons of mass destruction were actually in Cuba, in contrast with, the rush to judgement in Iraq by the Bush administration.
[Saturday, August 16, 2008]
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So close to the abyss
In reading "One Minute to Midnight", one gets the sense that, in a way, we are living those thirteen days in 1962 all over again, but in an extended fashion. This definitive book about the Cuban missile crisis is riveting from cover to cover as the author, Michael Dobbs, charts a timeline of horror and heart-stopping drama. What one side didn't know about the other must seem truly remarkable now, given the uncovering of new evidence presented here. We came closer to the abyss than we thought and if it hadn't been for a series of mishaps, good and bad luck, and final sound judgment, would I be writing this today?
It's hard to pick a "best moment" in this book, but the idea that President Kennedy could broadcast an address heard around the world and not talk with Chairman Khrushchev in "real time", has to be one of the intensely personal outcomes of the crisis. The triangulation here is evident...Castro, a rising politician in the western hemisphere, had hooked his star to the Soviet Union...and with it came all the pitfalls of that association. As Dobbs indicates, the missile crisis was the height of the Soviet-Cuban alliance. But the private and personal memoirs of those days really make this book stand out. From the U-2 pilot who wandered into Soviet airspace at the height of the tensions because of "celestial navigation", to the Soviet submarine commander, who had run out of time, luck and just about everything else...these are the stories that "One Minute to Midnight" captures with eloquence and sincerity.
The military aspect is central, of course, and there is much made of the Kennedy inner circle at the White House. We also know more of what must have gone through Khrushchev's mind and how he handled the fanatical Castro. But if the American public was on a high state of alert the Cubans were remarkably calm. Yet the missile crisis could have exploded in a thousand different ways at almost any given point during late October...militarily or politically. As it turned out JFK was dead a year later and Khrushchev was gone a year after that. Castro became the survivior.
"One Minute to Midnight" is a further explanation of the Cuban missile crisis and it is good that Dobbs closes with a sober comparison of JFK to George Bush, the former knowing of the consequences of war, personally. This book, which I highly recommend, is timely not only as a terrific study of October, 1962, but how the lessons of history seem not to be learned by those destined to repeat its failures.
[Thursday, August 14, 2008]
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