One Minute To Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War - Hardcover

Dobbs, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1400043581 ISBN 13: 9781400043583

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2008

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

"A densely packed, suspenseful, fast-paced narrative" -- Publishers Weekly, starred review (April 21, 2008)

"Mesmerising stuff ... a riveting hour-by-hour account of one day that could have changed the history of humanity" -- Joanna Bourke, The Times (June 7 2008)

"An important work of scholarship...Dobbs [is] an experienced investigative journalist, a talented writer and an intelligent historical analyst"
-- Martin Sherman, co-author of American Prometheus

'A book with sobering new information . . . as well as contemporary relevance . . . filled with insights that will change the views of experts' -- Richard Holbrooke, former US ambassador to the UN, The New York Times Book Review

'Compelling - and thrilling - new study by Michael Dobbs... there is much new material that forces us to revise our assumptions about the crisis' -- Christopher Silvester, Daily Express (11 July 2008)

'Dobbs writes it up like a thriller'
-- Billy Heller, New York Post

'Filled with memorable characters in extraordinary circumstances and exotic settings . . . evokes novelists like Alan Furst, John le Carré or Graham Greene' -- Washington Post Book World

`A relentless and determined researcher... [Dobbs] seeks to humanise the story and bring it down to the level of the individual pilot or soldier' -- Irish Times (5 July 2008)

`A worthy study of this much mythologised fortnight... [with] a natural sense of pace' -- Time Out

`[Dobbs] has made extensive use of untapped archive material to reveal the secrets of the cloak-and-dagger operations behind the nuclear stand-off in the Caribbean... Excellent'
-- John Crossland, Daily Mail (11 July 2008)

From the Publisher:

'Compelling and thrilling new study...much new material forces us to revise our assumptions...perfectly judges the acceleration of pace' Christopher Silvester, Daily Express (July 11, 2008)

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1400043581
• ISBN 13: 9781400043583
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 426