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Jump to navigationJump to searchOne Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Krushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs (view source)
Revision as of 14:38, 24 August 2020
, 14:38, 24 August 2020no edit summary
And it is a story too. Michael Dobbs has achieved the seemingly impossible in producing an academically rigorous text which is written in a way that makes excellent reading – Dobbs himself describes it as combining ''the techniques of a historian with the techniques of a journalist''. It's a detailed retelling of events – moving to a minute-by-minute basis at the height of the crisis – which never loses sight of the human beings involved.
The story is dominated by the three Presidents but it's the individuals on the front line whose stories make the most commanding reading. The 'distinction' of being the person who almost precipitated us into World War Three could well have gone to a pilot many thousands of miles away from Cuba – he accidentally over flew overflew the USSR when the tension was at its height. Back in Cuba , there was a young Russian who had only just written home to his mother to tell her that he was alive and well (but unable to tell her where he was) – only to be killed in a road accident shortly afterwards. The convoy was moving missiles and the commander was unable to avoid using his radio to call for help – thus revealing his positions to the Americans.
Kennedy's charisma (and unfortunate demise) has meant that many histories of the Cuban Missile crisis make it appear that the missiles appeared on Cuba with no provocation from the USA, but Dobbs writes a remarkably non-partisan account which makes it clear that attempts to displace Castro had been ongoing for some time and whilst placing nuclear missiles in the USA's backyard might seem extreme it's easy to see why Castro thought that they were necessary.
It's a superb book and I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to The Bookbag.
For a more general book about the Kennedy era , you can do little better than [[Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years by David Talbot]]. We've also been impressed by [[Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner]] which looks at sixty years of the CIA. You might also appreciate [[Doomsday Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon by P D Smith]].
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