On the Brink: Americans and Soviets Reexamine the Cuban Missile Crisis [Paperback]

James G. Blight (Author), David A. Welch (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This impressive piece of scholarship consists of an edited transcript of two 1987 conferencesthe first at Hawk's Cay in Florida, the other in Cambridge, Mass.attended by policymaking participants in the Cuban missile crisis and scholars noted for their work on the subject. The book also includes follow-up interviews as well as searching analysis and commentary by Blight and Welch. Among the conferees were Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, Maxwell Taylor, McGeorge Bundy and George Ball. Among the scholars: Thomas Schelling and Richard Neustadt. Three Soviets took part in the second conference: a former speechwriter for Nikita Khrushchev, Anastas Mikoyan's former personal secretary, and a senior member of the Central Committee. In these extraordinarily candid discussions, the participants trace the development and resolution of the crisis, shedding considerable light on a complex affair. The book is important reading both for students of the 1962 Cuban crisis and as a model of grand-scale crisis resolution. A third conference is to be held, in which high-ranking Cubans are expected to participate. Blight is executive director of Harvard's Center for Science and International Affairs, where Welch is a research fellow.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 428 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (May 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374522278
• ISBN-13: 978-0374522278
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,366,981 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Critical oral history of the Cuban Missile Crisis, May 4, 2011

By 

Caleb Hanson (Wilmington, MA, US) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: On the Brink: Americans and Soviets Reexamine the Cuban Missile Crisis (Paperback)

What the authors call "critical oral history": write-ups and analyses of a number of conversations about the crisis of October 1962, 25 years later. The first, in Florida, March 1987, between some surviving members of Kennedy's ExComm and scholars of the subject; the second, a series of interviews in May 1987 with two hawks and two doves from the ExComm; the third (and most interesting), in Cambridge, October 1987, between three former ExComms and three Soviet officials who were close to things in '62; and, in the Afterword, no transcript but an analysis of a meeting in January 1989 in Moscow, with the six principals from Cambridge, more Soviets (including Gromyko and Dobrynin!), and a handful of Cubans!

Not for beginners: assumes some knowledge of the events (at least as much as from watching the tv drama "Missiles of October"). There are a few surprises that come up here and there, but most of the fun is in watching people with very different perspectives on the crisis try to put the pieces together 25 years after the fact, and try to guess what was going on inside the heads of JFK, RFK, and Khruschev. Now, 20 *more* years after the event, it doesn't feel very relevant anymore, and it's not a straightforward narrative of events by any means; but for what it is, it's very interesting reading once. Mostly for scholars of the crisis; I doubt it would be much fun for the lay reader.