One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
by Michael Dobbs
What nearly started a nuclear war in October 1962? Not Kennedy, and not Khrushchev. Dobbs rebuilds Black Saturday hour by hour from American, Soviet and Cuban sources, and what you find is a U-2 lost over Siberia, warheads trucked around Cuba, and F-102s scrambled with nuclear missiles aboard.
Core ideas
- Less control than they believed: The near-misses came from junior officers and lost pilots, not from Washington or Moscow.
- The third party: Castro was pushing for a first strike while both leaders were looking for the exit.
- The tidy lesson doesn't hold: Once you see it hour by hour, resolute brinkmanship looks a lot less like a plan.
Published2008
Pages448
ISBN9781400043583
ReadSep 2026
