Max Hastings brings his signature style—a mixture of the grand (sweeping insights into great events) and the granular (carefully sifted details from diaries and letters of ordinary people)—to the much-studied subject of the Cuban missile crisis. The result is a book to match the best things ever written on the subject in terms of immediacy and drama.”— Christian Science Monitor It wasn’t until 1992 that the US learned that the Soviets had had tactical (short-range) nuclear weapons at their disposal – each with a charge similar to that detonated over Hiroshima – and that plans had been drawn up to permit their use in the event of a land invasion. Should this have happened, had Kennedy chosen to follow the recommendations of his military chiefs, a nuclear response would have been probable. The ensuing public pressure would have made it extremely hard for the US president not to retaliate in kind. Kennedy was distrustful of his military and intelligence advisers, partly because of the previous year’s Bay of Pigs fiasco – Dwight Eisenhower’s planned invasion of Cuba that Kennedy had felt obliged to carry through – and we should only be thankful that some in his circle, under his calm leadership, were able to stem their hubris and sabre-rattling. What sets Hastings’ account apart from other historians is his integration of the views of everyday individuals in the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba. Cuban peasants, Russian workers, and American college students are all quoted as to their reactions and emotional state during the crisis. The result is a perspective that is missing from other accounts and educates the reader as to the mindset of ordinary citizens who would pay the ultimate price if the crisis had gone sideways. Once those missiles were discovered by U2 overflights, President John F. Kennedy came under intense pressure from the military establishment – especially a barely-hinged Curtis Lemay, head of the Strategic Air Command – to destroy the missiles by airstrike, followed by an invasion. Indeed, the desire of the armed forces for swift action led them to make the kind of impossible guarantees typically reserved for salesmen of used automobiles. This was the first real test of the MAD concept, and indeed it stayed the hand of the warring adversaries of the Cold War. It is worth being reminded that this happened despite a belligerent and foolhardy American military, doomed to delve disastrously into Vietnam a decade later.

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. Hastings recounts the history of the crisis from the viewpoints of national leaders, Soviet officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots and British peacemakers. Hastings, success as an author has always rested upon eyewitness interviews, archival work, tape recordings, and insightful analysis – his current work is no exception. The positions, comments, and actions of President John F. Kennedy, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and Fidel Castro among many other important personalities are on full display.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 An excellent narrative of a crucial geopolitical event. What I liked most about this extremely well researched & written book is the fearlessness with which the author shares his personal perspectives and assessments of events and characters all through the book. Hastings doesnt shy away from making informed judgements which I found a useful guide in understanding the why behind the what. Another is the cultural and national assumptions that all those involved brought to the table. Hastings points out that, "In the eyes of all save Americans, a piece is missing from both the fevered October 1962 discussions in Washington and most histories published since. US leaders took it for granted that their country could not be expected to endure the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. It was undoubtedly the case that domestic opinion regarded the deployment as representing as much a mortal insult as a deadly peril. But, echoing Harold Macmillan's courteous observation to JFK, there was no more logical or legal cause why the Cubans should not choose to host nuclear weapons on their soil than that the Turks, Italians or British should be denied such a right. European NATO members had lived for years with a proximate Soviet atomic threat. The American debate was conducted by men wearing historical blinkers - sharing the assumption that the United States had privileges in determining what was, and was not, acceptable in Cuba such as were a commonplace to President Theodore Roosevelt, but represented an anachronism in 1962." The US took its imperialism for granted, much as the Soviet Union assumed that America was weak and decadent. Hastings comments elsewhere that Kennedy's reality was not Khruschev's reality, that they did not see the world in the same way and could not assume that the other would react in the same way to events as they would themselves. That is good advice in personal interactions, never mind in international affairs, and it is remarkable that it was not applied more thoughtfully during the Crisis. A brilliant, beautifully constructed and thrilling re-assessment of the most perilous moment in history’ Daily Telegraph The book raises some profound questions. Did the placing of strategic nuclear missiles on Cuba a few miles from the American mainland really alter the balance of power in the Western Hemisphere? Europe had been living with a Soviet led Armageddon on its doorstep for years and in any event, submarines equipped with nuclear missiles parked in the Atlantic would offer an even greater, less easily detectable threat than Cuba. Also, the stark contrast between the enormous destructive power of the weaponry involved and the frighteningly slow and primitive means of communication available to the Americans and the Soviets.

Despite their certainty of success, the Joint Chiefs of Staff seemed strangely unconcerned that their overwhelming conventional forces might require the Soviet Union to escalate to the use of nuclear missiles and bombs. They were also unaware that tactical nukes had been sent to Cuba and – in the high heat of an amphibious assault – could very well have been used on the beaches. In his account of the Cuban Missile Crisis, celebrated journalist/military historian Hastings shifts his focus to the attitudes of Soviet, Cuban, and U.S. participants, explaining as much as describing their actions. With a 75,000-copy first printing. Library Journal 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.

Hastings’s] incisive account of the standoff between the US and Russia has chilling and timely lessons 60 years on . . . . Abyssprovides chastening lessons on how easily things can spiral out of control but also how catastrophe can be averted.”— The Guardian Of course, much of the action takes place in the White House, where the so-called Executive Committee met to discuss options, all while being secretly recorded. Unlike the authoritarian regimes in Russia and Cuba, America’s decision-making has been made transparent by the voluminous transcripts that have been released. I appreciated that Hastings took this into account when forming his verdicts, noting that the imperfect logic employed in the U.S. was probably no worse – and likely far better – than that which took place in the Soviet Union.