Book cover of Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962

Book description

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

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union.…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Abyss as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

It was a brilliant reminder of how perilously close the world came to the catastrophe of a nuclear war in 1962, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev installed nuclear missiles in Castro's Cuba, directly threatening the paranoid minds of the USA. The book is brilliantly written, incredibly well researched, and an invaluable look at what went on behind the scenes of how close we came to a war, fought with nuclear weapons.

Max Hastings is a journalist and author of several dozen books mainly on warfare. Being well-connected he is able to draw on a wide circle of friends and acquaintances to contribute their experiences, research, and ideas to his own analysis of one of the most potentially dangerous events in post-war history.

His books draw on a very wide range of sources and are invariably highly readable but also reliable. Much has been written about the Cuban Missile Crisis and Abyss pulls facts together in a digestible way with references throughout and a useful but far from complete bibliography.

What is…

From Vic's list on modern military aviation.

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