Abyss

The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962

By: Max Hastings

Narrated by: John Hopkins

A Times History Book of the Year 2022

From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings ‘the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis’ Daily Telegraph

The 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 twentieth century history. He is as shocked as are millions of us around the world, to discover that the rape of Ukraine gives this narrative a hitherto unimaginable twenty-first century immediacy. We may be witnessing the onset of a new Cold War between nuclear-armed superpowers.

To contend with today’s threat, which Hastings fears will prove enduring, it is critical to understand how, sixty years ago, the world survived its last glimpse into the abyss. Only by fearing the worst, he argues, can our leaders hope to secure the survival of the planet.

©2022 Max Hastings (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

‘Grabs from the get-go… as if this were the very best fiction’ Daily Mail

‘A brilliant, beautifully constructed and thrilling re-assessment of the most perilous moment in history’ Daily Telegraph

‘Frightening but hopelessly addictive’ The Times

Excellent piece-fascinating new insights

Brilliant read-absolutely fascinating, excellent new sources & summary of both sides actions. Got through it really quickly-couldn’t put it down