Abyss - The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962

Daily Telegraph ''A story that grabs from the get-go - the moments in which the world teetered on the brink of total annihilation come alive as they would if this were the very best fiction'' Justin Webb, Mail on Sunday ''The most gripping narrative of the crisis... frightening but hopelessly addictive'' Gerald DeGroot, Times 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 Hastings''s 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 eye-witness interviews, archive documents and diaries, White House tape recordings, top-down analysis, first to paint word-portraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castro''s Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev''s Russia and Kennedy''s America; then to describe the nail-biting 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 twenty-first century immediacy. We may be witnessing the onset of a new Cold War between nuclear-armed superpowers. To contend with today''s 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. ...

Product details

• Authors: Max Hastings
• Publisher: William Collins
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 11.05.2023
• EAN: 9780008365035
• ISBN: 978-0-00-836503-5
• No. of pages: 538
• Dimensions: 128 mm x 197 mm x 34 mm
• Subjects: Non-fiction book; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Military, Cuba, military history, HISTORY / Military / Nuclear Warfare, HISTORY / Military / Biological & Chemical Warfare, Diplomacy, History of the Americas, Nuclear weapons, Military intelligence, Modern warfare, Former Soviet Union, USSR (Europe), USSR, Soviet Union, Military history: post-WW2 conflicts, The Cold War, Armed Conflict, Cold wars and proxy conflicts, HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century / General, HISTORY / Russia / General