A review by alexbond3
One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs

4.0

It’s hard to intellectually accept, even today, how close the world came to nuclear apocalypse in October 1962. It’s just a hard thing to imagine, especially given the near total lack of military conflict in or near the United States, that tens of millions of people came hours - even minutes - away from being vaporized, with literally thousands of massive mushroom clouds darkening the sky around the world. This book delves into a mountain of materials, newly unclassified after five decades, that detail just what happened, minute to minute, to bring us closer to World War III than we ever were or have been since. It’s written like a journalistic thriller. I was most struck by how savvy and cool-headed John Kennedy remained, all while dealing with a scarily instinctual, uneducated counterpart in Khrushchev, who had his own, even more unhinged and unpredictable revolutionary, Fidel Castro, shouting absurdly irresponsible demands in Khrushchev’s ear both during and after the crisis. Kennedy also had to deal with idiotically hawkish military advisors and a slew of physical ailments, not to mention his sustained philandering. Thank goodness he overcame all these obstacles, and had his brother Bobby there too to help keep him sane.