Customer Reviews

At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This fascinating book is a must read for those who have "been there" during the Cold War and also for those for whom it is just a part of history. I found the book compelling and exciting, although I wouldn't characterize it as a comprehensive history as much as a memoir of one who viewed the struggle between the U.S. and the Soviet Union from several significant perspectives.

Three salient points came to mind as I read this book. First, the Cold War was as real a struggle as any of the "hotter" wars in our history. In the early 1970's, I served as an Aircraft Maintenance Officer in SAC. I remember looking across the flightline during the 1973 Yom Kippur War at over 120 hydrogen bombs and warheads being loaded for real when we went to DEFCON 3. My life was dictated by Green Dot Alerts, DEFCONS and Alert Postures, with the knowledge that we were only 30 minutes from nuclear anhiliation. I also remember the professionalism of those in SAC who held the "nuclear keys" and respected them for the responsibilities they had and the awesome decisions they may be called to make. Mr. Reed's portrayal of both sides' desire to avoid the ultimate conflict is comforting, even in hindsight.

The second point I derived from the book is that the Cold War was finally won by our economic might. Interactions between nations have always been governed by economics, all the way back to our Revolutionary War, when the French sided with us in order to benefit from potential trade, and the Dutch bankers helped bankroll the War through loans to the Colonies. Mr. Reed's insights to the total lack of understanding the Soviets had regarding, cost, profit, and the law of supply and demand are particularly enlightening.

The final point I found somewhat disquieting. Mr. Reed's discussion describing the amount of weapons grade uranium and plutonium sitting in the former Soviet Union, coupled with the desires of some nations and terrorist groups who are considerably less rational than the Soviet government and military was makes me wonder how long it will be before the next atmospheric "test" occurs over an American or European population center. Responding to this challenge is as important today as America's response to the Soviet Union was over fifty years ago.

I invite you to read this book and find out for yourself. I think you will find it fascinating.

Thomas C. Reed's book, At the Abyss, confirmed many of my suspicions and presents a plethora of substantiating data for my beliefs. The tidbits on titanium shovels, oil system computer chips, and specific individuals were most revealing.

Of greatest importance was the dedication, resolve, and professionalism of the members of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Force and America's nuclear forces that brings an overwhelming calming to those who placed our fates in their hands.

The purpose of At The Abyss was to give our generation a sense of closure, since there was no parade - Strategic Air Command just disappeared without fanfare.

This book is written in bite-sized chapters that permit short-term assimilation, and long term rumination and retention capabilities. Mr. Reed's perspective and authoritative position make this work worth reading for any student of the Cold War. It was a distinct pleasure and honor to read this discourse on such an important subject.

Alwyn T. Lloyd

Author of A COLD WAR LEGACY - A Tribute to Strategic Air Command 1946-1992

Tom Reed's book brought back the memories of those days in SAC when any one of a number of conditions could have unleashed the horror of multiple nuclear explosions. Fortunately, the wisdom and maturity of the right people at the right time evaded those conditons. And the discipline of SAC crewmembers and leaders was vital to the success of the standoff.
Reed also focuses on the bravery of those few who had to risk their lives to gather intelligence prior to satellite reconnaissance development. All in all, a real eye-opener on what went on inside the halls of power.

Reed writes this insider's history of the Cold War in the prose of a fine novelist. This is a difficult book to put down. It is about powerful people and their interactions within the framework of government at its highest level. Politics and poker! Bureaucracy and those who knew how to cut through it. A calculating and manipulating president's wife. Americans and Soviets exercising superb judgment at critical moments, moments that could have made for a different life on this planet had those judgments not been correct. Five stars from me.

I just finished reading At The Abyss and found it captivating. I greatly appreciated the insider view of the many events ( and key people) that filled both my childhood and early adult life. As a youngster and a young man at that time, many of the early events described in this book are etched in my memory, but they had very little context to them. Mr. Reed has provided the compelling details to fill in the story.

I highly recommend the book because I believe that few of my boomer generation really understood, at the time, the gravity of the ongoing cold war struggle with the Soviet Union, so tellingly portrayed here.

Albert Einstein once famously said, "God does not play dice." But if perhaps he had been around long enough to witness the Cold War in its entirety he also would have justly added a corollary: "Ah but Man...Man does indeed play dice." In this he would have been ominously correct. For when the realization sets in of just how precariously close the world was to the brink of nuclear annihilation throughout the Cold War, it is readily apparent: "We did roll the nuclear dice." Many times over in fact. Amazingly, our number did not come up.

The Cold War, 1947 - 1991, was a period of intense rivalry between the world's two major superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union. It was also a period of great technological achievement. With that scientific advancement came first the advent of the atomic bomb, quickly followed by thermonuclear weapons with their vastly horrific and unfathomable destructive power, and then in quick succession the development of ballistic missiles, nuclear powered submarines, long-range jet-engine bombers, and a multitude of varying space technologies including satellites; all of which only served to intensify and increase the dangers and implications of the American - Soviet standoff. The possibility of armed confrontation was ever present. And indeed the major proxy wars of Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan were in actuality, de facto wars between the two superpowers.

Against this backdrop, Thomas C. Reed's uniquely interesting account of the Cold War, At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War, serves to put a personal touch on the conflict. Dedicated to the "Cold Warriors" of both sides who "never lost their respect for the fires of hell that would surely follow any careless act at the edge of the abyss," Reed's book is a tribute to the professionalism and level headedness of the politicians and soldiers alike, on both sides, who never lost sight of the ultimate consequences that could befall us all, if we should fail to keep the peace. For this, he seeks as his thesis, merely to recognize their immense achievement and to pay homage to their `against-all-odds' victory. And Reed does so in a most fascinating way. By giving his own personal eyewitness account of the Cold War and by recounting for posterity many lesser know episodes that occurred during the conflict. As a former Secretary of the Air Force (and service member), as a defense contractor and expert in nuclear weapons, and as a top-level advisor to numerous administrations, Thomas Reed is aptly qualified to render such a work. The result is a mesmerizing, yet scary, personal journey through the nether world of high-tech weapons, high-stakes diplomacy, and nuclear brinkmanship.

Resplendent with little known facts, unbelievable tales, personal biographical sketches (of both major and minor figures - specifically American and Soviet nuclear weapons scientist), and intriguing technical details of Cold War weaponry, At the Abyss, is a riveting confession of the Cold War. Backhandedly, it is a condemnation of the Soviet system. Although he doesn't purport to give an overt explanation of just why the Cold War occurred, or to delve into the deeper ramifications of such events, Reed's portrayal is invaluable in ascertaining the significance of such scholarly questions. His insight is invaluable. Quoting from Whittaker Chamber's book Witness, Reed clearly saw the Cold War for precisely what it was: a turning point in history, where it was decided "for generations [to come] whether all mankind is to become communist, or whether the whole world is to become free..." (pg. 11). And Reed certainly held no illusions about the other side and what he and his fellow Americans were fighting against throughout the duration of the Cold War. Citing the Soviet Gulags, or labor camps, Reed is quick to point out that the Stalin regime alone sent over "eighteen million souls" to "five hundred Gulags" during his tenure. Ignominiously but perhaps befitting, when Stalin passed his remains were interred into a little known grave beyond the Kremlin walls "at night and in great secrecy" on none other than Halloween night. His successor, Nikita Khrushchev, actually met Reed's father once in New York. Reed graciously relates his father's experience and characterization of Khrushchev as a "brittle, ill-informed, and doctrinaire peasant devoid of charm one usually expects from a visiting head of government" (pg. 28). He goes on to add that when his father entered his hotel suite, Khrushchev was "barefoot and in shirtsleeves, sporting a pistol in a holster around his chest." Such poignant pictures painted by Reed grandly capture the essence of the era and helps to fills in the little known details of the period.

Humanitarian atrocities aside, with all their inherent intrigue and woe, Reed also denounces the Soviet economic system and rightly points out that it was predominantly this causal factor alone that ultimately lead to the demise of the Soviet government and thereby harkened the end of the Cold War. Including such interesting tid-bits beyond what Washington officials secretly knew, Reed quotes a 1992 Economist report which compared the worth of Soviet raw goods to finish products, and astutely recognized that, the "Soviet system was subtracting almost half the value of the raw materials produced before delivering products"(pg. 224-225). Reed adroitly makes the case of how the Soviet Union had become an unsustainable military-industrial complex tittering on the brink of collapse. That the end would surely come was inevitable, but when and in what fashion was the million-dollar question. Would it all end in a nuclear holocaust? Just how close we came to this fiery conclusion is also related. During the Korean Conflict, when the Chinese entered the conflict, "Nuclear weapons were on the table" (pg. 36). Again, on October 26, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, "Castro asked Khrushchev for a preemptive nuclear strike on the United States" (pg. 18). So many times, so hauntingly close we came to that disastrous final ending of all humanity.

Between the rise and ebb of the Cold War, Reed's narrative is jam-packed with intriguing tales of Cold War events and military chicanery such as the Frogman Episode, "Cabbage Ravine," the Teapot Committee, Francis Gary Power's untimely demise, Talent-Keyhole, how the U.S. covertly financed the deployment of the Thor missile system to the U.K., Project Q, how nuclear weapons were made safe with P.A.L.S., the CIA's OP34A, America's Flexible Response strategy, and the Brezhnev Doctrine. Interestingly written and encompassing a wide array of topics, Reed's style is informative, colorful, and easy to read. My main criticism of the work would be in Reed's referencing - it does tend to be a little on the sparse side.

So who would have thought back in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when we were deep in the midst of the Cold War, and when the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev said to President Kennedy, "[We are pushing] mankind towards the abyss of a world nuclear-missile war" how it would have ended. So many times it could have abruptly ended in total nuclear devastation. Instead on Christmas day, 1991, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev called President George Bush to wish him "a very quiet Christmas evening.... I am saying good-bye and shaking your hands." The Cold War was over. It had ended peaceably. At the Abyss is a fitting tribute to those who made it that way.

The stakes couldn't have been higher -- and we won. This breathless, behind-the-scenes account shows exactly how that happened. Tom Clancy meets real-life.

The author is unapologetically biased toward the right of the American political continuum. While the book did contain some interesting information and first hand accounts, it was, for the most part, just plain inaccurate and congratulatory. If the reader is a fan of Ronald Reagan than he will enjoy this book as it is cheerleading for that brand of conservative ideology. For instance, the author concludes that the cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union was the policies of the Regan administration, specifically Reagan's personal desire to end communism and his illogical goal of the elimination of all US & Soviet strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union actually disintegrated as a result of its own policies and practices along with its increasing inability to maintain control over the Eastern Bloc. The book is rife with jingoism, I cannot recommend it for the serious student of Cold War history as anything more than a memoir, it is far too subjective and opinionated. No objective historian can consider this an accurate and factual study of the history of the Cold War. Additionally the book was not footnoted sufficiently and was sorely lacking in primary and secondary sources. A great deal of the citations were the authors opinions and Reagan's personal diary. Thomas C. Reed may very well have been an insider in the first Regan administration, but he is by no means a historian. If the reader is looking for an in-depth and well researched piece, I recommend "The Dead Hand" by David E. Hoffman. Hoffman cites "At the Abyss" in his book and includes any relevant information that can be found in this book.

A nice little Cold War history book, with some interesting insight into America's economic and military policies during the time period.

My biggest annoyance with the book was that the author could/should have used an editor. There are random military and air force abbreviations which the lay reader simply does not understand. Same with respect to people; sometimes they are not "introduced" until it is too late. Nothing a good once-over could not have fixed.

At the Abyss is a quick read. I was left with the impression of how grateful we should all be for the ability of many people on both sides of the cold war to restrain themselves from creating a nuclear holocaust.