Abyss

A Times History Book of the Year 2022From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings -the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis- Daily TelegraphThe 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation.Max Hastings-s graphic new history tells the story from the viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots and British disarmers. Max Hastings deploys his accustomed blend of eye-witness interviews, archive documents and diaries, White House tape recordings, top-down analysis, first to paint word-portraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castro-s Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev-s Russia and Kennedy-s America; then to describe the nail-biting Thirteen Days in which Armageddon beckoned.Hastings began researching this book believing that he was exploring a past event from twenti