Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis,Serhii Plokhy

-About this book

A harrowing account of the Cuban missile crisis and how the US and USSR came to the brink of nuclear apocalypse.
Nearly thirty years after the end of the Cold War, today’s world leaders are abandoning disarmament treaties, building up their nuclear arsenals, and exchanging threats of nuclear strikes. To survive this new atomic age, we must relearn the lessons of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War: the Cuban missile crisis.
Serhii Plokhy’s Nuclear Folly offers an international perspective on the crisis, tracing the tortuous decision-making that produced and then resolved it, which involved John Kennedy and his advisers, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and their commanders on the ground. In breathtaking detail, Plokhy vividly recounts the young JFK being played by the canny Khrushchev; the hotheaded Castro willing to defy the USSR and threatening to align himself with China; the Soviet troops on the ground clearing jungle foliage in the tropical heat, and desperately trying to conceal nuclear installations on Cuba, which were nonetheless easily spotted by U-2 spy planes; and the hair-raising near misses at sea that nearly caused a Soviet nuclear-armed submarine to fire its weapons.
More often than not, the Americans and Soviets misread each other, operated under false information, and came perilously close to nuclear catastrophe. Despite these errors, nuclear war was ultimately avoided for one central reason: fear, and the realization that any escalation on either the Soviets’ or the Americans’ part would lead to mutual destruction.
Drawing on a range of Soviet archival sources, including previously classified KGB documents, as well as White House tapes, Plokhy masterfully illustrates the drama and anxiety of those tense days, and provides a way for us to grapple with the problems posed in our present day.

-CONTENTS
Preface
Prologue
I. NEMESES

1. Apprentice
2. Master of the Game
II. RED GAMBLE

3. Triumph of Communism
4. Rocket Man
5. Going Nuclear
6. Operation Anadyr
7. High Seas
III. AGONY OF DECISION

8. Prisoner of Berlin
9. Tip-Off
10. Honeymoon
11. “Wipe Them Out”
12. Quarantine
IV. MOMENT OF TRUTH

13. Moscow Night
14. Blinking in the Dark
15. Wooden Knife
16 The Americans Are Coming!
V. BLACK SATURDAY

17. Turkish Quagmire
18. Losing Control
19. “Target Destroyed!”
20. Secret Rendezvous
21. Bermuda Triangle
VI. RISING FROM THE DEAD

22. Sunday Scare
23. Winners and Losers
24. Indignation
VII. SETTLEMENT

25. Mission Impossible
26. Back at the Barricade
27. Thanksgiving
Epilogue

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

-caractéristiques

Date de parution:13 avril 2021

Éditeur : Allen Lane

Langue : Anglais

NB.de pages : 464 pages

ISBN-10 : 0241454735

ISBN-13 : 978-0241454732

Poids de l’article : 700 g

Dimensions : 16.2 x 4.1 x 24 cm