Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962

An extraordinary new account of the Cuban Missile Crisis and how it created some of the most dangerous, unstable years in world history – from the number one bestselling historian Max Hastings.

In the style of his bestselling history Vietnam, this book sees veteran war reporter and historian Max Hastings take on the Cuban Missile Crisis. In these gripping, authoritative pages, Hastings tells the story of a war that seemed like a stalemate, and a threat that could have meant apocalypse. Threaded together are close-up character portraits and big picture analysis, military collisions and accounts of the social, political forces that dictated decisions.

This is a new history for a new generation, putting fresh, international context on an astonishing military and political showdown. In those throes of the Cold War, hundreds of millions of people around the world were, for some days, terrified that a nuclear holocaust was imminent. Bringing together the threads of American bellicosity and Soviet brinksmanship, it becomes clear that while both sides eventually stepped away from destruction, that does not mean disaster was not terrifyingly close.

Casting new light on an epic clash of wills, this is the story of when the abyss beckoned.