Product Description

October 27, 1962, a day dubbed Black Saturday in the Kennedy White House. The Cuban missile crisis is at its height, and the world is drawing ever closer to nuclear apocalypse. As the opposing Cold War leaders, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, mobilize their forces to fight a nuclear war on land, sea and air, the world watches in terror. In Bobby Kennedy's words, 'There was a feeling that the noose was tightening on all of us, on Americans, on mankind, and that the bridges to escape were crumbling'.In "One Minute to Midnight" Michael Dobbs brings a fresh perspective to this crucial moment in twentieth-century history. Using a wealth of untapped archival material, he tells both the human and the political story of Black Saturday, taking the reader into the White House, the Kremlin and along the entire Cold War battlefront. Dobbs' thrilling narrative features a cast of characters - including Soviet veterans never before interviewed by a western writer - with unique stories to tell, witnesses to one of the greatest mobilizations of men and equipment since the Second World War.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1105733 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

From the Back Cover
October 27, 1962, a day dubbed Black Saturday in the Kennedy White House. The Cuban missile crisis is at its height, and the world is drawing ever closer to nuclear apocalypse.

As the opposing Cold War leaders, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, mobilise their forces to fight a nuclear war on land, sea and air, the world watches in terror. In Bobby Kennedy’s words, ‘There was a feeling that the noose was tightening on all of us, on Americans, on mankind, and that the bridges to escape were crumbling.'

In One Minute to Midnight Michael Dobbs uses a wealth of unseen archival material to tell both the human and the political story of Black Saturday, taking the reader into the White House, the Kremlin and along the entire Cold War battlefront.

Dobbs's thrilling narrative features a cast of characters – including Soviet veterans never before interviewed by a Western writer – with unique stories to tell, witnesses to this crucial moment in twentieth-century history.

Praise for ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT:

‘A riveting, hour-by-hour account of one day that could have changed the history of humanity’ Joanna Bourke, The Times

‘Excellent… [Dobbs] has made extensive use of untapped archive material to reveal the secrets of the cloak-and-dagger operations behind the nuclear stand-off’ John Crossland, Daily Mail

‘A book with sobering new information, as well as contemporary relevance … filled with insights that will change the views of experts’ Richard Holbrooke, former US Ambassador to the UN, New York Times Book Review

‘A compelling – and thrilling – new study … There is much new material that forces us to revise our assumptions about the crisis’ Christopher Silvester, Daily Express

About the Author
Michael Dobbs is a reporter for the Washington Post, who devoted much of his journalistic career to covering the collapse of communism. He was the Post's bureau chief in Warsaw (1980-82), Paris (1983-86) and Moscow (1988-1993). He has held fellowships at Harvard and Princeton University and is the author of three books: Down with Big Brother (1996), Madeleine Albright (1999) and Saboteurs (2004). Down with Big Brother was a runner-up for the 1997 PEN award for non-fiction.

Customer Reviews

Disappointing
Half way between a serious piece of historical documentary and an airport 'thriller'. Too near the latter for my liking. Even if you can cope with its continual self promotion ("as revealed for the first time ever, in this book ...."), then the switches between a grown up assesment of the political and military background and the sections whch read like fiction, even though I accept they may not be, then this is a tiresome trying read. It's the use of the two styles which is so difficult to cope with. Whether you want something which reads like a piece of cheap fiction or a serious analysis of an important historical event - with this book, unless you want both at the same time, you'll be disappointed. And I was so looking forward to reading this book. Avoid.

Engaging
Unlike other reviewers I find its style easy to read and never turgid as other books on the subject can be. There is a good mix of major and minor 'characters' and it does portray the fact that much of what was happening was out of the control of Kennedy et al, and that minor characters could have had such a huge bearing on the outcome. It also is astonishing how slow communications where in the early 1960's.

If you have time its a good idea to Google the crisis because many of the conversations between Kennedy and his advisors are online and illuminate many of the passages in the book. He only really mentions 2 or 3 times that something is 'new' and the new things are not sensationalist items but new slants on accepted events. This is not a "revisionist" book or one hunting for a 'sexy' angle but pretty good history made accessible.

Well worth the read and again really lets you realize how out of control the politicians were of the situation and how incompetence and army bravado could have led to a dangerous situation becoming cataclysmic.

Gripping enough to be fiction, and how much more frightening that it was all true...
The title of this book refers to the Doomsday Clock, a symbolic clock which charts how close mankind is to global catastrophe, which is obviously 'midnight'. The clock was never adjusted during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the events of which took place over too short a period for the clock to be 'officially' adjusted, but had it been one minute is probably a pretty accurate adjustment. This book takes an hour-by-hour overview of the thirteen days of the Missile Crisis, from the American, Soviet and Cuban viewpoints. It includes a lot of information that has only recently come to light, such as the Soviet tactical nuclear weapons that were aimed at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base or the American U-2 spy-plane that got lost during a routine mission over the North Pole and strayed in Soviet airspace right at the height of the confrontation. It's a very good book, and the hour-by-hour format really makes you appreciate the tension of the major players and how close things came. Dobbs also makes you realise, by charting not just the actions of Kennedy and Khrushchev, but the soldiers and civilians on the ground, how much of an illusion control is and how easily things could have spiralled beyond retreat or redemption.