One Minute to Midnight

One Minute to Midnight, by Michael Dobbs

Michael Dobbs begins his terrifically readable One Minute to Midnight by stating that "few events in history have been as studied and analyzed as the Cuban missile crisis." While this may be the case, Dobbs, a reporter for The Washington Post, has written a compellingly interesting and gripping account of those days in October, 1962 when the United States and the Soviet Union came extremely close to nuclear confrontation. Once the United States became aware of the presence of Soviet nuclear warhead missiles in Cuba, the battle of wills began between President John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, Premier of the Soviet Union. Added into that mix was the often widely anti-American voice of Fidel Castro. Dobbs documents the political trials of both Kennedy and Khrushchev in detail as they come close to launching a nuclear war and then retreat from that path when the horrors of that possibility become all too real. This is a highly recommended book!
-Roy