Customer Reviews

On the Brink: Americans and Soviets Reexamine the Cuban Missile Crisis

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

 

 

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.