One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War [Paperback]

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 Guantánamo; 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.

Extraordinary. . . . As gripping as any fiction. Dobbs is an impeccable researcher and reporter.
—The Christian Science Monitor

A book with sobering new information about the world's only superpower nuclear confrontation—as well as contemporary relevance . . . Filled with insights that will change the views of experts and help inform a new generation.
—Richard Holbrooke, The New York Times Book Review

Riveting and highly informative, One Minute to Midnight portrays the intense human drama of mankind on the brink of an unthinkable war.
—The Philadelphia Inquirer

Gripping. . . . A significant contribution to our understanding of that perilous autumn.
—Bloomberg News

[Dobbs] succeeds brilliantly, marshaling diverse sources to relate an intensely human story of AlC%