One minute to midnight
In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear conflict over the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba. In this hour-by-hour chronicle of those tense days, veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs reveals just 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 Guantanamo; the handling of Soviet nuclear warheads on Cuba; and the extraordinary story of a U-2 spy plane that got lost over Russia at the peak of the crisis.Written like a thriller, One Minute to Midnight is an exhaustively researched account of what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called "the most dangerous moment in human history," and the definitive book on the Cuban missile crisis.From the Trade Paperback edition.
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2012–2026years
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What Hacker News says
- There is an incredibly good minute-by-minute account of the Cuban crisis: "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War" - it covers a lot of areas that aren't often mentioned such as the U2 flight at the North Pole going astray or the Soviet nuclear cruise missile teams targetting Guantanamo that taken together with the more well known events make it seem remarkable to me that we survived.
- Listened to a lot of audiobooks this year, and can recommend:
A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon by Neil Sheehan (Biography and background to the development of the ICBM)
The American War in Afghanistan: A History by Carter Malkasian
One Minute to Midnight by Michael Dobbs (about the Cuban missile crisis)
Chip War by Chris Miller (about the semiconductor industry and it's place in geopolitical competition)
- I can strongly recommend "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War" by Michael Dobbs:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2606779-one-minute-to-mi...
For extra nightmare fuel "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner" by Daniel Ellsberg:
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/25663779-the-doomsday...
The latter book literally gave me nightmares.
- Another good one to illustrate the fragility of the world we live in: One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs.
To me it was eye-opening to read about all the close shaves which could easily have ended in catastrophic misinterpretation by one side, and to wonder what might be going on along similar lines today.
The events described in this book were also dramatized in the movie "Thirteen Days".
- If you want to be scared silly I can recommend "One Minute to Midnight" by Michael Dobbs - it goes through the Cuban Missile crisis minute by minute with a lot of detail. The number of things that went wrong that almost led to war are remarkable - e.g. who would have thought that the Northern Lights could have helped start a nuclear war.... It also covers the story of the submarine fleet that Vasili Arkhipov was on and why they were a bit tetchy when the US Navy started annoying them.
- I can strongly recommend One Minute to Midnight for a minute by minute account of the Cuban missile crisis - it is incredibly tense even though we know it worked out OK!
http://www.amazon.com/One-Minute-Midnight-Kennedy-Khrushchev...
