One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
MichaelDobbs Bob Walter
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Free Read [Philosophy Book] Ë One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War - by MichaelDobbs Bob Walter ↠


  • Title: One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
  • Author: MichaelDobbs Bob Walter
  • ISBN: 9781415954584
  • Page: 247
  • Format: Audio

    • In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be sliding inexorably toward a nuclear conflict over the placement of missiles in Cuba Veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has pored over previously untapped American, Soviet, and Cuban sources to produce the most authoritative book yet on the Cuban missile crisisIn October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be sliding inexorably toward a nuclear conflict over the placement of missiles in Cuba Veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has pored over previously untapped American, Soviet, and Cuban sources to produce the most authoritative book yet on the Cuban missile crisis In his hour by hour chronicle of those near fatal days, Dobbs reveals some startling new incidents that illustrate how close we came to Armageddon.Here, for the first time, are gripping accounts of Khrushchev s plan to destroy the U.S naval base at Guant namo the accidental overflight of the Soviet Union by an American spy plane the movement of Soviet nuclear warheads around Cuba during the tensest days of the crisis the activities of CIA agents inside Cuba and the crash landing of an American F 106 jet with a live nuclear weapon on board.Dobbs takes us inside the White House and the Kremlin as Kennedy and Khrushchev agonize over the possibility of war He shows how these two leaders recognized the terrifying realities of the nuclear age while Castro never swayed by conventional political considerations demonstrated the messianic ambition of a man selected by history for a unique mission Dobbs brings us onto the decks of American ships patrolling Cuba inside sweltering Soviet submarines and missile units as they ready their warheads and onto the streets of Miami, where anti Castro exiles plot the dictator s overthrow.From the Compact Disc edition.
    MichaelDobbs Bob Walter
    Michael Dobbs was, almost literally, a child of the Cold War His diplomat parents whisked him off to Russia at the age of six weeks As a child, he lived through the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and the construction of the Berlin wall As a reporter for the Washington Post, he witnessed the birth of the Solidarity movement in Poland, the hope and tragedy of Tiananmen Square, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the war in the former Yugoslavia.When he first went to Russia in 1950, Stalin was at the height of his power When he left, in 1993, communism had collapsed and the Red Flag no longer flew over the Kremlin How and why this happened is the story of the Cold War trilogy from its origins in the aftermath of World War II Six Months in 1945 to its peak, during the Cuban Missile Crisis One Minute to Midnight , to the grand finale Down with Big Brother.


    Commentaires:

    Matt
    The “Doomsday Clock” is one of the great attention-grabbers ever devised. It is a symbolic clock created by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to represent the countdown to a nuclear war. (At least initially. Now the representation also includes climate change). Once the clock strikes midnight, Cinderella turns into a shadow on the wall from the thermal radiation of an atomic blast. The Doomsday Clock appropriately lends itself to the title of Michael Dobbs’s One Minute to Midnight, a detai [...]
    Andrew Smith
    This is the third account of the Cuban Missile Crisis I’ve read; following versions published in JFK & RFK biographies I’ve ploughed through in the past year or so. It’s very, very detailed and provides a view of events from both the Cuban and Russian camps, as well as from the team managing the crisis in Washington. There is quite a bit of additional information here and though it’s historically fascinating I’d have to say it’s a pretty dry read.Three things I learnt:1. RFK & [...]
    Geevee
    I knew of the Cuban Missile Crisis but had never read anything about it, but thanks to another GR member's review I decided to order a copy from my library. I was not to be disappointed.The author is well placed to write on the superpowers having been a foreign correspondent for the Washington Post in Europe, for much of the time in the USSR and Russia, and as a State Department reporter for that newspaper too.So with this experience and expertise Mr Dobbs delivers a book that is a fast paced an [...]
    Michael Kotsarinis
    3.75/5One of the books that prove history (when written in such an engaging way) is at least as good as fiction!Extensively researched, debunks many of the myths associated with the crisis and doesn't attempt to create more sensation than the actual events. I may be wrong but I also got the feeling that it's one of the most impartial books out there regarding the Cold War.
    Jason
    John F. Kennedy was a man of peace. Whatever else anyone says or tells you, he believed firmly in a world free of war and destruction. Nowhere is this more self-evident than in the crucible of his greatest moment as President of the United States: the Cuban Missile Crisis and the thirteen days the US (and the world) stood upon the brink of an unthinkable nuclear war. Some people have said that he was assassinated for his belief in a world free of wars, alas that is a topic for another time (and [...]
    Andy
    Dobb's effectively argues that once the Cuban missile crisis was set in motion, the difficulty for the two leaders was not deciding to prevent an escalation (which would almost surely have lead to nuclear war), but rather preventing the situation from spiraling out of control despite their wishes. The terrible timing of many smaller events during the crisis could have easily turned any one of them into a match for nuclear war. Most disturbing were the many descriptions of single low ranked indiv [...]
    Pete daPixie
    Michael Dobbs' fascinating trawl through the historical archives has produced a worthy examination of the Cuban Missile Crisis in his 2008 publication of 'One Minute To Midnight'.For those readers who were alive in 1962, as well as those born since, this book should convince all, how lucky we are to be alive and kicking.Dobbs also taught me that one of my favourite movies, Kubrick's 'Dr.Strangelove' contained a serious flaw. It wasn't insane enough. Here was the real thing, with crazy military p [...]
    Michael Flanagan
    As a child of the 80's I often heard reference to the Cuban Missile Crisis as the day the world held its breath. I knew it had to do with some nuclear missile being placed in Cuba by the Russians that in turn upset the US, but that was about as far as my knowledge went. As I read my way through this book my eyes grew wider and wider till I thought they were going to pop out of my head. What an amazing and utterly terrifying moment in history.The authors goes to great lengths to instill into the [...]
    Keith
    After a certain age when we read history we generally know the broad outlines, we more or less know how it came out in the end. What we don't often know are the details, the stories of how things came to end up in a particular configuration. In One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Kruschchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear WarMichael Dobbs accurately fills in the details of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. He has made use of many previously unpublished archival materials. He has arranged [...]
    Joe
    The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 may be one of the most analyzed events of the Cold War and hence one more book on the topic could be considered redundant – One Minute to Midnight proves this is not so. Using a multitude of sources and written from a variety of perspectives, this book reads at times like one of Tom Clancy’s early books. The reader finds himself in the White House, the Kremlin, the cockpit of a U2 spy plane, a Russian submarine and the jungles of Cuba – most of this informa [...]
    Alex
    We were dang close to nuclear war. I guess I knew that, but this book really drove that point home to me. Basically, humans were just lucky. We were apparently lucky that for one thing Kennedy and Khrushchev were the leaders in power at that moment (they were both gone in two years). Certainly, there were those in positions of influence on both sides who wanted to escalate the conflict.This book is written as a timeline, but it seems like it could have used that framework more effectively. In fa [...]
    Amit Tiwary
    One of the finest book on Cuban Crisis.If you have not read much on Cuban Crisis, you should pick this one.
    Tom Carrico
    Book ReviewOne Minute to MidnightBy Michael DobbsThe death of Osama Bin Laden was met with many emotions and prompted much rhetoric in the press. One of the commentaries which I found quite compelling was one by a talking head on CNN who spoke of “the children of 9/11.” He was not referring to the children of victims of that tragic day’s attacks, but the children who have grown up under the specter of terrorism. He wondered how growing up in an “unsafe and unpredictable world” would af [...]
    Frank Stein
    This is a kaleidoscopic view of humanity's most dangerous thirteen days, tracking everyone from the President of the United States and the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party to the U-2 pilots and submarine captains who fought out this almost silent war across the globe. Though the narrative can sometimes get lost in the details, Michael Dobbs knows that the details are fascinating, and they were often what determined the course of events.Dobbs emphasizes that by Tuesday October 23rd [...]
    Eric Bittner
    Easily one of the best books that I've read in the last 5 years, and by far the best book I've read on the Cuban Missile Crisis (and I've read at least 5 others). The author demolishes a lot of the mythology and conventional wisdom surrounding the events of October 1962. What emerges is an even more frightening account of just how close we came to a nuclear holocaust. Among the frightening revelations that are made in this book for the first time, the Soviets were prepared to strike the US base [...]
    Cailean
    Extraordinary detail and research went into this book. At times I wanted to stop because it was so dense and took a lot of mental power to truly comprehend all the details and the timeline. I could only read it in 30-minute sessions and would tell my husband after each one, "My brain is tired!" I persevered because I had to know what would happen next. Sure, the author could have written a much shorter book and said basically "this happened, the end" but that's what is for, right? This book is [...]
    Tony
    Dobbs, Michael. ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. (2008). *****. This is probably the best account I have ever read of the Cuban Missle Crisis. The author has used recently declassified sources to explore the actual events that occurred in October of 1962 and gone back to original sources and new interviews to characterize the personalities involved. The book reads like a top-notch spy novel by LeCarre or Furst, but is unbelievable based on true [...]
    Martin
    A minute by minute account of the Cuban Missile Crisis, this exhaustively researched history book is a compulsive page-turner, like a Cold War spy novel of the time. The players are not just JFK, RFK, McNamara, Kruschev, Castro and Che, but everyone involved directly or indirectly, from a pilot gone off course over Siberia to a Swedish captain of a cargo ship taking Russian potatoes to Cuba. The author states that any of the smallest actions could have had tremendous consequences if reacted to w [...]
    Annabelle
    extremely well put together day by day/hour by hour account of the cuban missile crisis in the week leading up to 'black Saturday' 27th of October 1962 and how the powers that be from all sides were responding to news as it came in. Also told in such vivid detail that it brings home how terrifying close the world came to nuclear war. This book really takes you behind the scenes. I've read many books and articles on how the ordinary people were reacting to nuclear threat, all the protests movemen [...]
    Aditya Pareek
    I absolutely love the writing's pace and the trilogy deserves more exposure than it has, sadly the author is absent or inactive on GRs since 2012, when he apparently "bothered" with a little online marketing of his work.Michael you won't get far without engaging your readers.Still The best book on geopolitical history I have ever read.The included pictures of the FKR cruise missiles pointed at Guantanamo marine baser in my life have I come across such an in-depth history in such an engaging flow [...]
    Bryan Craig
    This book goes far beyond the naval blockade and "eye ball to eye ball." The author uses recently declassified documents to paint a scary picture of how close we could have gone to war. The Cuban side of things is great. This might be my new standard on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
    BrokenTune
    Review posted on BookLikes:brokentuneoklikes/post/
    Campbell
    I don't really know what to say about this. Fascinatingly detailed, compelling and terrifying in equal measure. If you've any interest at all in the politics of nuclear war (and how to avoid it), then this is the book for you.
    Meihan Liu
    Unlike Prof H, not all reporters write better history books than academians. This book of Dobbs lacks explanation on a very basic issue while building up a fascinating story: why did the Soviets send missiles to Cuba in the very first place? (Some other popular journalism history works, such as The Best and the Brightest, are too opinionated to my taste. Not to mention those about uprisings in Eastern Europe since the beginning of the CW).
    James Murphy
    I was in school during the Cuban missile crisis. I was living alone off campus and remember going to bed one night with uncertainty and fear of what events might unfold while I slept. I don't remember the date but think it must have been 27 Oct 62, the day Dobbs calls Black Saturday. He's written a gripping account of those days at the edge of nuclear war. He lays his narrative out in day-by-day and hour-by-hour detail told from the perspective of all 3 players, America, the Soviet Union, and Cu [...]
    Ali MSK
    Good read (listen) on the details and decision making done during the "Cuban Missiles Crisis", especially the tension and how close was the world to a nuclear war, especially at two separate occasions during the crisis.
    Brian
    History is never as simple as perceived. The story of the Cuban Missile Crisis is often boiled down to Kennedy vs Krushchev and that moment when American ships stared down Soviet ships, daring them to cross the quarantine line. But that telling, while also completely untrue, forgets what Kennedy knew at the time, that no president waves his arm and makes history happen. There are often people and events over which leaders have no control. This book was written to tell the other stories and inter [...]
    Jerome
    A riveting and nuanced day-by-day history of the Cuban Missile Crisis from all sides.Dobbs’ account of the Kennedy administration’s response to the crisis is balanced and he describes all of the uncertainty and indecision. Dobbs commends both Kennedy and Khrushchev for preventing an escalation of the crisis despite the hawkish advice they both received from their advisors. Dobbs ably describes the chaos and confusion of the period and how it was often caused by nothing more than pure ignoran [...]
    S Jordan
    The 1962 Cuban missile crisis is a seminal moment in the Cold War – by most accounts its most dangerous moment. But like the Alamo (another seminal moment in the American narrative), the crisis has become encrusted with myth. Dobbs’ imminently readable book examines the crisis with the advantages of hindsight and the archives of history, and without an ax to grind. He debunks the mythology that has grown around the events from self-serving interviews and books, as well as from films that cou [...]
    Phil
    This book somehow made one of the most fascinating and terrifying events in world history even more fascinating and terrifying. This book provided insight into the mindset of not just Kennedy, Krushchev, and Castro, but also pilots, troops, rebels, and many others who played a role in the Cuban missile crisis. It was also interesting to learn about the capabilities of each nation and how the other side frequently misjudged them. It is a chilling story.I liked the organization as a timeline, show [...]
    • Free Read [Philosophy Book] Ë One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War - by MichaelDobbs Bob Walter ↠
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      Posted by:MichaelDobbs Bob Walter
      Published :2018-09-03T07:31:53+00:00