High Noon in the Cold War
Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “[A] riveting retrospective examination of the Cuban Missile Crisis” (The Washington Times), from one of the giants of American journalism, Pulitzer Prize winner Max Frankel
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History
In High Noon in the Cold War, Max Frankel captures the Cuban Missile Crisis in a new light, from inside the hearts and minds of the famous men who provoked and, in the nick of time, resolved the confrontation. Using his experiences covering Moscow and Havana and the Missile Crisis in Washington, the former executive editor of The New York Times has gathered evidence from recent records and new scholarship to correct widely held misconceptions about the game of “nuclear chicken” played by John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev in October 1962, when Soviet missiles were secretly planted in Cuba and aimed at the United States.
High Noon in the Cold War gives balanced and nuanced portraits of Kennedy and Khrushchev, depicting both as more measured and deliberative in their actions than in many previous accounts. Here, too, are forgotten heroes like John McCone, the conservative Republican CIA head who played a key role in White House strategic debates. In detailing the disastrous miscalculations of the two superpowers and how Kennedy and Khrushchev beat back hotheads in their own councils, this fascinating book chronicles the whole story of the Cold War’s most frightening encounter.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"It all began with a Russian ploy worthy of the horse at Troy." So begins Frankel's account of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. In October 1962, two men, Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy, stood locked in psychological combat, a hairbreadth from Armageddon. A former executive editor of the New York Times and Pulitzer winner who covered Khrushchev's Moscow, Kennedy's Washington and Castro's Havana, Frankel blends his own notes with the most recent scholarship on the crisis. The result is a great story, told from different vantage points and filled with drama. While he concludes that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were never really on the brink of war, Frankel constantly reminds us of how high the stakes were; the balance of geopolitical power with Cuba, Berlin, Turkey and the solidarity of the NATO alliance were all at risk. Kennedy is presented as the unquestionable hero in this confrontation, a man full of imagination, capable of great cunning and equally adroit at outmaneuvering both his Russian and Republican foes. As his adviser McGeorge Bundy once observed, "orests have been felled to print the reflections and conclusions of participants, observers and scholars" of the crisis. Though breaking no new ground, Frankel offers sobering lessons in leadership for the war on terrorism.
