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The Abyss: Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962
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86/99
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About This Book
Bestselling author Max Hastings offers a welcome re-evaluation of one of the most gripping and tense international events in modern history—the Cuban Missile Crisis—providing a people-focused narrative that explores the attitudes and conduct of Russians, Cubans, Americans, and a terrified world that followed each moment as it unfolded. In The Abyss, Max Hastings turns his focus to one of the most terrifying events of the mid-twentieth century—the thirteen days in October 1962 when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war. Hastings looks at the conflict with fresh eyes, focusing on the people at the heart of the crisis—America President John F. Kennedy, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, and a host of their advisors. Combining in-depth research with Hasting's well-honed insights, The Abyss is a human history that unfolds on a wide, colorful canvas. As the action moves back and forth from Moscow to Washington, DC, to Havana, Hastings seeks to explain, as much as to describe, the attitudes and conduct of the Soviets, Cubans, and Americans, and to recreate the tension and heightened fears of countless innocent bystanders whose lives hung in the balance. Reflecting on the outcome of these events, he reveals how the aftermath of this momentous crisis continues to reverberate today. Powerful, and riveting, filled with compelling detail and told with narrative flair, The Abyss is history at its finest.
Reviews
"Reading any account of the crisis, much less one as accessible and involving as this crafted by Hastings, always provokes a graveyard chill ..."
"Until recently, the disturbing truth about what actually happened 60 years ago has been hidden in often inaccessible academic studies, leaving the public to shelter in cozy ignorance."
"This is in no way to diminish the dangerousness of the Cuban missile crisis."
"A compelling narrative."
"Perhaps the book's most interesting contribution is its reassessment of the key figures, for this really was a historical moment driven by personality, which turned on individual decisions."
"The tense and suspenseful atmosphere interweaving the negotiations and political developments as they occurred between Cuba, the Soviet Union, and the U.S."
"In his latest, he thoroughly explores a fraught set of circumstances that almost lead to World War III."
"Replete with astute characterizations of participants in the crisis, Hastings' able account registers the peril humanity then faced and still faces in a world of competitive, nuclear-armed countries."
"This riveting history speaks clearly to the present moment."
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