One Minute to Midnight

By Michael Dobbs

Categories: History

One Minute to Midnight (2008) is journalist Michael Dobbs's hour-by-hour account of the most dangerous days of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. Drawing on archives in the United States, Russia and Cuba and on interviews with veterans, Dobbs follows John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro alongside pilots, soldiers and submariners. He shows how accidents, misunderstandings and decisions by individuals far from Washington and Moscow brought the superpowers closer to nuclear war than their leaders knew.

Recommended by 1 person

• Fareed Zakaria: “It’s a gripping, moment-by-moment account of the crisis, the best one I’ve read. I think you’ll enjoy it.”