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 | One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
Author: Michael Dobbs
Publisher: Knopf
Binding: Hardcover
Released: 2008-06-03
Sales Rank: 1759
ISBN: 1400043581
Edition:
Cover
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 2008-08-17 - One Minute to Midnight...
Extensive research and documentation of that research. Interesting insights to the personal actions of actors in this realp-life drama. One of those books that is hard to put down. For me a rare experience: I wrote the author my compliments and specific response. I recommend this book.
 2008-08-16 - Doomsday Averted
This was a very good, day by day, in some cases minute by minute description of the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Certainly the topic has been done before, but Dobbs is a very thorough reporter and brings forth a lot of material I did not know about until now.
And this is an event I lived through. Dobbs makes the point that the "eyeball to eyeball" event of Russian ships turning around when they saw the American blockade was an exageration, that the ships were hundreds of miles apart. However, the book as a whole makes it seem like the world's two super powers were closer to going to war than I realized. When Kruschchev announced he would pull out the missiles on a Sunday, Kennedy had already authorized an air strike on the following Tuesday. We really were on the brink of a nuclear war.
Kennedy and Khruschev each come off as relatively level head political leaders dealing with a military leaders and systems poised to launch a nuclear war. Castro, not so much.
Dobbs does a masterful job of juggling events on a world wide canvas. The book moves seamlessly from scenes in Washington, Moscow, Havana, the missiles sites in Cuba, on board Soviet submarines, American U2 flights, including when an Alaskan based plane inadvertently goes over Soviet airspace.
The book is stronger on reportage than analysis. Not that the analysis is wrong headed, just that there is not really very much of it. Still, it was hard not to be impressed with the effort the Kennedy administration went to in their effort to establish that the weapons of mass destruction were actually in Cuba, in contrast with, the rush to judgement in Iraq by the Bush administration.
2008-08-14 - So close to the abyss
In reading "One Minute to Midnight", one gets the sense that, in a way, we are living those thirteen days in 1962 all over again, but in an extended fashion. This definitive book about the Cuban missile crisis is riveting from cover to cover as the author, Michael Dobbs, charts a timeline of horror and heart-stopping drama. What one side didn't know about the other must seem truly remarkable now, given the uncovering of new evidence presented here. We came closer to the abyss than we thought and if it hadn't been for a series of mishaps, good and bad luck, and final sound judgment, would I be writing this today?
It's hard to pick a "best moment" in this book, but the idea that President Kennedy could broadcast an address heard around the world and not talk with Chairman Khrushchev in "real time", has to be one of the intensely personal outcomes of the crisis. The triangulation here is evident...Castro, a rising politician in the western hemisphere, had hooked his star to the Soviet Union...and with it came all the pitfalls of that association. As Dobbs indicates, the missile crisis was the height of the Soviet-Cuban alliance. But the private and personal memoirs of those days really make this book stand out. From the U-2 pilot who wandered into Soviet airspace at the height of the tensions because of "celestial navigation", to the Soviet submarine commander, who had run out of time, luck and just about everything else...these are the stories that "One Minute to Midnight" captures with eloquence and sincerity.
The military aspect is central, of course, and there is much made of the Kennedy inner circle at the White House. We also know more of what must have gone through Khrushchev's mind and how he handled the fanatical Castro. But if the American public was on a high state of alert the Cubans were remarkably calm. Yet the missile crisis could have exploded in a thousand different ways at almost any given point during late October...militarily or politically. As it turned out JFK was dead a year later and Khrushchev was gone a year after that. Castro became the survivior.
"One Minute to Midnight" is a further explanation of the Cuban missile crisis and it is good that Dobbs closes with a sober comparison of JFK to George Bush, the former knowing of the consequences of war, personally. This book, which I highly recommend, is timely not only as a terrific study of October, 1962, but how the lessons of history seem not to be learned by those destined to repeat its failures.
2008-08-03 - We were in the midst of it
As a Cuban exile I was training for a job in Key West when the October Missile Crisis exploded. I was twenty, my wife nineteen and our baby three months old.
The narrow over-the-water highway connecting the mainland to Key West was closed to civilian trafic. Hundreds of missile launchers were transported from Homestead, Fl. to Key West along with tanks, troops and war materiel.In a matter of hours all stores ran out of stock, just like during a Cat.5 hurricane warning.
"One Minute to Midnight" is so accurate and well researched that reading it was like re-living the nightmare of those days.
We were horrified about what would happen in the event of a Castro missile attack, and the only time we felt safe was when we heard the American F-14 fighter jets flying overhead day and night.
This book is a perfect example of accurate and well written contemporary history. I highly recommend it.
It is stored in our library under the section "Memories of Exile"
Signed: Andrew J. Rodriguez, author of "Adios, Havana," a memoir.
2008-07-25 - New Scholarship Makes this a Good Purchase
The new details uncovered by Mr. Dobbs makes this a "must purchase" for anyone genuinely interested in this historical episode.
However, I must admit that, from an entertainment perspective, the first half of this book dragged a bit while the second half was much more riveting.
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