A brilliant, beautifully constructed and thrilling re-assessment of the most perilous moment in history’ Daily Telegraph Our planet best hope to survive the 21st century relies upon an imperative that no one national leader shows themselves deficient in the fear which must lie at the heart of wisdom and which was indispensable to a peaceful resolution of cuban missile crisis" Obviously – as we do not yet inhabit a world of radioactive ash – the missiles of October never flew. Still, the margins were so thin, and the human element so pronounced, that it is unsurprising that this event has been the subject of numerous, sometimes excellent books. I can’t deny this book and its brilliant historian of an author, Max Hastings, the five stars it so righteously deserves. It was an incredibly detailed, piece by piece account of the ideas and actions taken by the three sides of the Cuban Missile Crisis’s main actors. From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings 'the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis' Daily Telegraph

Superb… reads like a thriller as the gripping drama of the Cold War power politics plays out behind closed doors in Washington, Moscow and Havana” - Daily Mail A good read! Max Hastings has an engaging way of writing, and his emphasis on the description of the crisis from the different perspectives of both countries and their citizens makes for a fuller understanding of the event. A Times History Book of the Year 2022 From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings 'the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis' Daily Telegraph Superb... reads like a thriller as the gripping drama of the Cold War power politics plays out behind closed doors in Washington, Moscow and Havana' Daily Mail

Brilliantly told... compelling... Hastings has cleverly woven the story together from all sides describing them in dramatic, almost hour by hour detail... this is a scary book. Hastings sees little evidence that today's leaders understand each other any better than they did in 1962' Sunday Times The book also goes over all of the incidents during the crisis such as the shooting down of the American U2 spy plane and the famous Soviet nuclear submarine whose captain allegedly was prevented from launching a nuclear missile by his subordinate and potentially preventing World War III. Hastings casts some doubt on the submarine incident as the timeline and the recollections of the witnesses are quite contradictory. Max Hastings excellent book on the Cuban Missile Crisis is terrifying, not least because of its contemporary relevance as relations between Russia and the West enter a new, colder phase. The events that unfolded in late 1962 as the USA realised that the Soviet Union had deployed nuclear weapons in Cuba and sought to secure their removal are quite possibly the closest humanity has ever come to self-extinction. Hastings journalistic instinct for storytelling serves to capture the drama of those frantic days, and his understanding of the principal actors involved on all sides, and of their motivations, add a further depth of insight. All told, this is a first-rate piece of popular narrative history. Hastings corrects a number of myths associated with the crisis. One of the most famous was the idea that on October 24, 1962, as Soviet ships approached the quarantine line the White House held its breath as to whether they could stay the course. In reality no merchant ship carrying weapons or troops approached anywhere near the invisible line. Soviet ships had reversed course the previous day, only one of which was closer than 500 miles. This was due in large part because of the weakness American naval communications. Another area that historians have overlooked was events in the Atlantic Ocean – particularly concerning were four Soviet submarines, one carrying a nuclear warhead. Hastings explores this aspect of the crisis, and the reader can only cringe as to what Washington did not know and the slow communication process that existed throughout the crisis. From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings ‘the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis’ Daily Telegraph

Here the well known 13 Days of the Cuban Missile Crisis from 1962 is examined from the perspective of not only the usual suspects of the American and Soviet leadership, but also the Brits, who by then had been nestled for over a decade with a threatening USSR, along with the rest of Europe. to reflect Cuban thinking at the time. This is contextualised well, as their fervour was then fresh from their revolution. The alternative perspective is easier to convey now that the adventurism of an American empire is better understood. In fact the book begins with the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs. Hastings . . . masterfully places the Cuban Missile Crisis within the tensions and relations between the United States and the Soviet Union in their Cold War context. The tense and suspenseful atmosphere interweaving the negotiations and political developments . . . are palpable in this elegantly written account. The personalities of all major players . . . are all fully realized in this book. . . . Based on extensive archival research, including in the UK, this eminently readable account provides a nice, single volume overview of the Cuban Missile Crisis. — Library Journal Hastings was educated at Charterhouse School and University College, Oxford, which he left after a year.After leaving Oxford University, Max Hastings became a foreign correspondent, and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC TV and the London Evening Standard.JFK had ample opportunity to resort to military action, but staid his hand despite pressure from members of the Joint Chiefs and others. The president was the driver of debate and became more of an “analyst-in-chief.” He pressed his colleagues to probe the implications of any actions the United States would take and offer reasonable solutions to end the crisis. For JFK it seemed as if he was in a chess match with Khrushchev countering each of his moves and trying to offer him a way out of the crisis he precipitated. THAT was some stuff. And that was just before Vietnam. Hastings, a masterful British military historian, researched this during the COVID pandemic and published just after Russia invaded Ukraine, leading him to useful comparisons of then and now, of Kruschev and Putin.

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. It’s not the primary source research, for there are no new revelations that have not been published elsewhere. And it’s not the ultimate judgments, for Hastings’s conclusions – that Khrushchev acted precipitously, that the American military establishment verged on the insane, and that President Kennedy handled the situation quite well – are fairly standard.A brilliant, beautifully constructed and thrilling re-assessment of the most perilous moment in history' Daily Telegraph 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. Rather, two things jumped out to me. First, there is an expanded scope that gives Cuba equal billing with the Soviet Union and the United States. Second, there is Hastings himself, whose writing is imbued with sharp observations, idiosyncratic tangents, and no shortage of confidence. Nearing eighty, Hastings still writes with the pungent style that suffused his earlier books. At one point, for instance, he refers to Ernest Hemingway as “the big bullshitter with the mustache.” He also makes frequent references to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, connecting the past with the present in a way that feels unforced.