The Abyss

Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962

By: Max Hastings

Narrated by: Max Hastings, John Hopkins

Bestselling author Max Hastings offers a welcome re-evaluation of one of the most gripping and tense international events in modern history—the Cuban Missile Crisis—providing a people-focused narrative that explores the attitudes and conduct of Russians, Cubans, Americans, and a terrified world that followed each moment as it unfolded.

In The Abyss, Max Hastings turns his focus to one of the most terrifying events of the mid-twentieth century—the thirteen days in October 1962 when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war. Hastings looks at the conflict with fresh eyes, focusing on the people at the heart of the crisis—America President John F. Kennedy, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, and a host of their advisors.

Combining in-depth research with Hasting’s well-honed insights, The Abyss is a human history that unfolds on a wide, colorful canvas. As the action moves back and forth from Moscow to Washington, DC, to Havana, Hastings seeks to explain, as much as to describe, the attitudes and conduct of the Soviets, Cubans, and Americans, and to recreate the tension and heightened fears of countless innocent bystanders whose lives hung in the balance. Reflecting on the outcome of these events, he reveals how the aftermath of this momentous crisis continues to reverberate today.

Powerful, and riveting, filled with compelling detail and told with narrative flair, The Abyss is history at its finest.

©2022 Max Hastings (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers

Brilliant.

No better book on this topic. Great detail you won’t go to jail for checking the mail if you go by rail or sail in a gale it’s quite a take it’s the final nail in the hail at Yale without kale without wail without a vail but you won’t get bail

Max NEVER Disappoints!

Content, perspective and insights are excellent as is the writing, pace. An enlightening listen that will amaze and terrify.

Must read.

Classic on strategic patience, risk and leadership during a deadly crisis. Lessons endure up to today.

The excellent writing and use of language. Also its bi partisan approach and relevance to todays challenges

Perhaps too many quotes from ordinary people but that was also sometimes a welcome change from the story if the daily events.

Factual, modern retelling of this nightmare I lived through.

Narrator was MOST excellent! Story kept me very involved. Particularly good is this modern, fully research story that includes previously classified documents. Fascinating.

Hastings does it again

Hard to imagine anyone ever topping this wise and thoughtful history of the cuban missile crisis. Max Hastings is a gift to history.

Brilliant analysis of the Cuban missile crisis.

Only Hastings has the reporting experience to create this balanced and comprehensive reportage of one of the 20th century’s most ghastly brushes with race annihilation.

Great Read 👍

loved it. The Narrator was spot on..perfect for the story. very engaging reading. recommended

Solid storytelling of a grave time

Hastings emphasizes the roles of 3.5 national leaders on the crisis. JFK’s Castro’s and Khrushchev’s already well known, the addition of MacMillian is interesting. His handling of the US joint chiefs is trite in my opinion. I would have also appreciated if Hastings spent more time on how JFK dismantled Ike’s NSC apparatus and its effect on White House decisions.

Typical great prose and a good balance of application to todays events.

One of his best

Big fan of Hastings and this is one of his best, just behind his Vietnam War book and the voice actor choice was inspired.