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One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (Vintage) |  | Author: Michael Dobbs
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $17.00
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Seller: lets-book
Rating:  49 reviews
Sales Rank: 48359
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 480
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 1
ISBN: 1400078911
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.922
EAN: 9781400078912
ASIN: 1400078911
Publication Date: June 2, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear conflict over the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba. In this hour-by-hour chronicle of those tense days, veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs reveals just 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 handling of Soviet nuclear warheads on Cuba; and the extraordinary story of a U-2 spy plane that got lost over Russia at the peak of the crisis.
Written like a thriller, One Minute to Midnight is an exhaustively researched account of what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called “the most dangerous moment in human history,” and the definitive book on the Cuban missile crisis.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 49
 Great research, weak writing. September 11, 2009
TheWestCoast (San Diego, California)
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
Dobbs is obviously a talented researcher, but some of his prose is appalling. Most of this book reads like a mediocre college dissertation and the repetitive nature of some of the anecdotes is jarring. The stuff in here is fascinating, it's a shame it was let down by weak editing.
 Tells It Like It Was September 3, 2009
Willie J. Smith
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is a "must buy," for it tells the untold story of Cold War detente, tensions, dangers (real and imagined), ploys, and exposes the brutal thinking of many Cold Way hawks. You'll be shocked at how close the world really came to nuclear holocaust and, what generals were leading the charge. This book, for many, also puts the Kennedy Administration in a take-charge, do what's right for humanity, light. It's one to be proud up. For those who lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, this book can help you appreciate level-headed thinking in the center of a storm. This book is a must-buy, whether for friends or... yourself. It is one you'll not want to put down until finished.
One Minute to Midnight August 29, 2009
William D. Reed Jr.
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Excellent, detailed chronology of all the key players involved in the most serious crisis of the cold war era presented with great insight to their individual personalities & backgrounds.
Highly recommended to fellow participants involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Most of us that served in the military at the time of this event had little knowledge of the overall perspective detailed by this author. We are indebted to him for his painstaking research & fair minded work. - LT W. D. Reed, USNR
Adds considerably to our understanding of the Cuban Missile Crisis! August 18, 2009
Todd B. Frary (Atlanta, GA USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Considering the huge volume of books written on the subject of the Cuban Missile Crisis you could be forgiven for thinking that everything that could have been said had already been covered had been. But the opening of Soviet era archives in Russia spurred renewed analysis of the subject. The passage of many of the central figures and those on the periphery has spurred renewed interest in interviewing them to try and glean new information before time runs out. Washington Post reporter Dobbs delves into interviewing those remaining participants with gusto, seeking out Cuban and Russian participants previously not interviewed to complete a well-rounded summary of the events of this standoff. The result challenges the perception of Kennedy, Khruschev and their advisors as steely and determined and portrays them as instead desperately improvising and instead lucking into a situation that averted nuclear war. And for an event that seemingly has been examined to death Dobbs comes up with new information that adds to our understanding of the events of October 1962. Dobbs is more interested in the big picture than examining the individual players, and that makes sense since they are all fairly well know by this time. I was tempted to question what Dobbs could add to the historiographical debate on the Cuban Missile Crisis, but instead came away with considerable respect for his efforts and "One Minute to Midnight."
Some of the shockers Dobbs comes up with aren't all that earth shattering but demonstrate the cold calculation of warfare, such as the plans to nuke Guantanamo Bay, which the US dismissed as a bluff. This does seem self destructive on its face as many Cubans would have also been killed in the attack, but certainly is plausible as Khruschev and Castro would view such deaths as a necessary sacrifice to defeat the US. Dobbs also covers the accidental overflight by U-2 pilot Charles Maultsby and reconstructs the flight path for the first time. Equally chilling is the story of the Soviet vessel Alexandrovsk which brings 68 nuclear warheads to Cuba undetected by the US. The extensive footnotes and bibliography speak to the considerable research that Dobbs made on the topic and he indeed is now one of the foremost scholars on the subject. "One Minute to Midnight" will appeal to historians and non-historians alike and Dobbs's writing is superb and captivating; absolutely hard to put down!
Second degree: even scarier July 29, 2009
Henri C. Ransford
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Excellent, extremely well documented book (to the extent that some of the details sometimes seem almost extraneous)
Above and beyond the laying bare of just how close we came to the final disaster, and just how many happenstances, flukes, random events, Keystone Kops-isms, and unsung contributions by obscure lower level operators barely saved the day a few times, and how braindead hotheads on both sides were blithely endangering life on Earth as we know it, an endlessly worrisome conclusion that can be drawn from the book goes like this:
1) Psychopaths exist (e.g. Castro was doing his absolute level best to trigger a nuclear war, because to him, it was kind of fun and ego-boosting)
2) Statistically, such psychopaths seem to be drawn to political careers within their communities far more often than is the case with more 'normal' people (also read Mao, The Untold History, by Chang and Halliday : same underlying story, different time & place.)
3) Therefore it can be foretold with a strong degree of certainty that extremely dangerous situations will always recur - unless structures are put in place preventing a lone psychopath's doings from having much impact (for instance, the way the EU in Europe was set up to prevent new European conflicts. At bottom, by limiting individual countries' sovereignty.)
Other solutions, such as banning WMDs would not seem to be really workable: Lowering the fear barrier imposed by nukes to the onset of widescale slaughter would have demonstrably caused immense carnage many times since WW2 - killings, suffering and destruction which we were only spared by the skin of our teeth - because the threshold seemed so very high.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 49
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