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Cold War Trilogy #2
One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
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 really did come to Armageddon.
Here, for the first time, are gripping accounts of Khrushchev's plan to destroy the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo; 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 ariveting account of history's most dangerous hours, full of lessons for our time.
Here, for the first time, are gripping accounts of Khrushchev's plan to destroy the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo; 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 ariveting account of history's most dangerous hours, full of lessons for our time.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published June 3, 2008
About the author
Michael Dobbs
7 books189 followersTo distinguish myself from all the "presidential historians" out there, I have invented a new area of expertise: "presidential crisis historian." How a president confronts the gravest challenges of modern times, and how his decisions affect the rest of us, has been a recurring theme of my seven books.
One Minute to Midnight focused on possibly the gravest crisis ever, in October 1962, when John F. Kennedy stepped back from the nuclear brink at the last possible moment. The Unwanted looked at Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the Jewish refugee crisis that preceded the Holocaust. Six Months in 1945 examined how FDR and Truman negotiated the perilous transition from World War to Cold War. My latest book, King Richard: An American Tragedy, relates the Shakespearean tale of the self-made man who scrambled his way to the top only to see his dreams turn to nightmares because of tragic character flaws.
Before becoming an author, I was a journalist and foreign correspondent. After a stint in Rome as a correspondent for Reuters, and a tour of Africa, I lived in Yugoslavia during the twilight years of Marshal Tito. I moved to Poland for The Washington Post just in time to witness the extraordinary spectacle of workers rebelling against the "workers' state." I was the first western reporter to visit the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk in August 1980. As The Post's bureau chief in Moscow, I was standing in front of Boris Yeltsin in August 1991 when he climbed on a tank to face down Communist hardliners. In between these two events, I covered the imposition of martial law in Poland, the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, Gorbachev-Reagan summits, the Tiananmen uprising in China, and the 1989 revolution in Romania.
In addition to my work as a journalist and a historian, I have taught courses at the universities of Princeton, Michigan, and Georgetown, as well as American University. I also spent seven years at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum where I organized conferences on the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, and researched and wrote The Unwanted. King Richard is my seventh book.
One Minute to Midnight focused on possibly the gravest crisis ever, in October 1962, when John F. Kennedy stepped back from the nuclear brink at the last possible moment. The Unwanted looked at Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the Jewish refugee crisis that preceded the Holocaust. Six Months in 1945 examined how FDR and Truman negotiated the perilous transition from World War to Cold War. My latest book, King Richard: An American Tragedy, relates the Shakespearean tale of the self-made man who scrambled his way to the top only to see his dreams turn to nightmares because of tragic character flaws.
Before becoming an author, I was a journalist and foreign correspondent. After a stint in Rome as a correspondent for Reuters, and a tour of Africa, I lived in Yugoslavia during the twilight years of Marshal Tito. I moved to Poland for The Washington Post just in time to witness the extraordinary spectacle of workers rebelling against the "workers' state." I was the first western reporter to visit the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk in August 1980. As The Post's bureau chief in Moscow, I was standing in front of Boris Yeltsin in August 1991 when he climbed on a tank to face down Communist hardliners. In between these two events, I covered the imposition of martial law in Poland, the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, Gorbachev-Reagan summits, the Tiananmen uprising in China, and the 1989 revolution in Romania.
In addition to my work as a journalist and a historian, I have taught courses at the universities of Princeton, Michigan, and Georgetown, as well as American University. I also spent seven years at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum where I organized conferences on the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, and researched and wrote The Unwanted. King Richard is my seventh book.
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