One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (Hardcover)

by Michael Dobbs (Author)
Key Phrases: fruit set, mis sile sites, low level planes, United States, Soviet Union, Air Force (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Washington Post reporter Dobbs (Saboteurs) is a master at telling stories as they unfold and from a variety of perspectives. In this re-examination of the 1963 Bay of Pigs face-off between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., Dobbs combines visits to Cuba, discussions with Russian participants and fingertip command of archival and printed U.S. sources to describe a wild ride that—contrary to the myth of Kennedy's steel-nerved crisis management—was shaped by improvisation, guesswork and blind luck. Dobbs's protagonists act not out of malevolence, incompetence or machismo. Kennedy, Khrushchev and their advisers emerge as men desperately seeking a handle on a situation no one wanted and no one could resolve. In a densely packed, fast-paced, suspenseful narrative, Dobbs presents the crisis from its early stages through the decision to blockade Cuba and Kennedy's ordering of DEFCON 2, the last step before an attack, to the final resolution on October 27 and 28. The work's climax is a detailed reconstruction of the dry-mouthed, sweaty-armpits environment of those final hours before both sides backed down. From first to last, this sustains Dobbs's case that crisis management is a contradiction in terms. (June 5)
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From Booklist
The 1962 Cuban missile crisis is probably the single most analyzed episode of the cold war. In the past decade, declassified American and Russian documents have proved that a nuclear exchange was even closer than most scholars had previously realized. Dobbs, a reporter for the Washington Post, has used those sources as well as numerous new ones gleaned from two years of research in the U.S., Cuba, and Russia. Although nothing presented here will change the overall view of the crisis, Dobbs presents new and often startling information that again confirms that the thirteen days in October brought the world to the edge of an unprecedented cataclysm. Dobbs spends little time describing the characters of the key players, but he does convey a sense of men under immense stress as events threaten to outstrip their ability to cope with them. This is a well-written effort to explain and understand our closest brush with nuclear war. --Jay Freeman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 3rd edition (June 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400043581
• ISBN-13: 978-1400043583
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #48,352 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Defcon 1, June 3, 2008

By	William D. Geerhart (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Author Michael Dobbs admits in his riveting new book on the Cuban Missile Crisis, One Minute to Midnight, that there are certain to be further revelations about this dark period in world history when more archival documents are declassified. However, the release of additional government and military paperwork - no matter how Top Secret - is unlikely to change the achievement of Mr. Dobbs' book in telling the definitive story of the October 1962 crisis.

Many people might ask what is left to tell after the dozens of books, movies and television documentaries that have already been released concerning one of the defining events of the Cold War. The answer is plenty. Dobbs, a reporter for the Washington Post who covered the collapse of Communism for that newspaper, has assembled a breathtaking narrative of the missile crisis covering all of the bases - small and large.

Among the new revelations from One Minute to Midnight:

The Soviets had detailed plans to nuke the Guantanamo Bay naval base and had deployed FKR cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads to a firing position within 15 miles of the base on the night of October 26-27, 1962. When speaking to a U.S. emissary early in the crisis, Khrushchev had threatened to destroy Guantanamo, but the U.S. dismissed the threat as bluster. The U.S. was, in fact, unaware of the actual danger to the base during the crisis.

A comprehensive narrative with new details of U-2 pilot Charles Maultsby's accidental overflight of Soviet airspace during the height of the crisis. Dobbs used Maultsby's memoirs, charts found at the National Archives and JFK Library and interviews to reconstruct the harrowing flight. The route map of the flight is revealed for the first time in the book.

The story of the Soviet ship Alexandrovsk and its weather-beaten trip across the Atlantic carrying 68 nuclear warheads. Incredibly, the ship delivered its deadly cargo to Cuba undetected by the U.S.

I also enjoyed the small, but telling details about civil defense that are contained in One Minute to Midnight. Details such as the following: Assembled journalists broke into guffaws when the subject of civil defense was raised at a Robert McNamara press conference during the crisis; pink identification cards were provided to JFK's top advisers that identified them for admittance to the Mount Weather government relocation site (aka The Special Facility); the fact that the President's naval aide, Captain Tazewell Shepard, was charged with filling the gap of what to do with the dependents of senior staff in civil defense contingency planning (family members were told by Tazewell that in the event of the necessity for relocation, they were to assemble inside a fenced-off reservoir in Northwest Washington without any personal belongings); Civil Defense head Steuart L. Pittman cautioned the President that evacuating the city of Miami would cause "a hell of a mess." There is also a surreal description in the book of JFK quizzing his military aide about "the Football" (the ever-present briefcase containing nuclear strike codes). Some of the President's questions were prompted by procedural details contained in the then recent novel about a military coup against a fictional chief executive entitled Seven Days in May.

The 40+ pages of research notes and citations at the back of One Minute to Midnight testify to the historical integrity of the tome and the amount of effort Michael Dobbs put into it. Many portions of the book read like a thriller and it is ideed hard to put down. Given the fact that we know the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the intensity of the "read" that Mr. Dobbs has provided is a remarkable accomplishment and one that should not be passed up.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling, scary history, June 9, 2008

By	Bruce Trinque (Amston, CT United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

For those of us old enough to remember the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis -- October, 1962 -- (I was a high school freshman at the time) Michael Dobbs's "One Minute to Midnight" stirs up memories of how it was to live in the knowledge that very possibly the next day, the next hour, the next minute might bring nuclear annihilation.

Based upon a vast quantity of primary sources material -- much of it previously classified -- including interviews with Soviet and Cuban personnel and even previously unstudied aerial photographs of the Soviet missile sites in Cuba -- Dobbs has constructed a rivetting day-by-day (and in places almost minute-by-minute) account of a world on the brink of nuclear war. Along the way, the author dispells some old myths (such as those surrounding the "eyeball-to-eyeball" confrontation of Soviet-controlled ships with the US Navy blockading forces) and reveals some startling new truths (unknown to American Intelligence at the time, the Soviets had deployed nuclear-armed cruise missiles against the American base at Guantanamo Bay).

Dobbs avoids overly mythologizing JFK's performance during the crisis (there was a good deal more uncertainty and policy shifting than was evident in White House accounts after the events), but neither does he seek to be a muck-raker denigrating JFK's leadership. In the end, the author praised both Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev for keeping their eyes on the goal, despite much hot-headed advice from many around them, of avoiding catastrophic war.

What emerges perhaps more than anything is a sense of the chaos and confusion that prevailed and so often threatened to heat the water pot beyond boiling, not because of anyone's conscious intent, but because ignorance of the full circumstances seemed to require it. We forget how primitive the state of communications and information technology was in 1961 as compared with today, and American and Soviet (and Cuban) leaders were often operating with vastly incomplete and even erroneous information.

"One Minute to Midnight" makes for compelling reading about one of the most dramatic, frightening series of global events to have occurred in the last several decades. Dobbs has done a first-rate job of laying out the complex details in an enthralling narrative.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One Minute to Midnight a story of Cold War miscalculations, June 20, 2008

By	Kenneth V. Jack (Coudersport PA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The new book, "One Minute to Midnight" by Michael Dobbs is a masterfully written account of the Cuban missile Crisis in October 1962. The book is written from the perspective of those who lived through the most dangerous Cold War encounter between the two nuclear super powers, Russia and the United States. It probes the power plays of the introduction of nuclear missiles in Cuba by Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy's response that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Being a veteran who served with the Navy photo reconnaissance squadron VFP-62 during that period, I had particular interest in reading the new material uncovered by Mr. Dobb's investigative reporting. VFP-62 photo Crusaders flew the low-level photo missions over Cuba, gathering the intelligence needed to help President Kennedy forge a plan of action that avoided nuclear catastrophe. The discovery of nuclear capable cruise missiles, by VFP-62 photos, revealed new information on how they were to be used against Guantanamo Naval Base and invading U.S. forces. The use of tactical nuclear weapons was not considered by the Pentagon in the initial planning of the intended invasion of Cuba.

The book is spell binding with the fast moving anticipation of a Tom Clancy novel, although in this case, events are real. Mr. Dobbs gets into the minds of the decision makers and probes the many ways the crisis could have ended in a total nuclear annihilation for Cuba, the Soviet Union, and the United States. The accounting of the wayward U2 that strayed over the Soviet Union during the height of the crisis, the crash of a F-106 with a nuclear bomb on board, the shoot down of a U2 over Cuba, the lack of full control over the nuclear weapons, in Cuba, the Soviet Union, and the United States, is a chilling reminder of how close we came to a nuclear disaster. Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, came to believe that only "luck" had prevented nuclear war over Cuba.

After 46 years, many today believe that they know all that is necessary about the Cuban missile crisis. Through television documentaries such as, "Man, Moment, Machine", or "DEFCON 2" by the History and Discovery Channels, or the movie "Thirteen Days", the public is led to a superficial coverage of the most dangerous time in our nation's history. Only a book such as this, written by a skilled writer, can provide that sense of conflict between the military and the civilian control over the use of nuclear weapons. The book provides the most chilling account of the indifference of the Generals and Fidel Castro to the eminent deaths and destruction of millions of lives. This is a must read that is relevant today as it was in 1962.