TY - BOOK AU - Hastings,Max TI - Abyss: the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 SN - 9780008364991 U1 - 973.922 PY - 2022/// CY - London PB - William Collins KW - Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 KW - Cold War KW - United States KW - History KW - 1961-1969 KW - Soviet Union KW - 1953-1985 KW - Cuba KW - 1959-1990 N2 - "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." -- ER -