Publishers Weekly
12/07/2020
Harvard history professor Plokhy (Forgotten Bastards) offers a comprehensive study of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis focused on the “misjudgments and misunderstandings” that nearly led to nuclear war. Bolstered by “ideological hubris” and afraid of appearing weak, President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev “marched from one mistake to another,” Plokhy asserts, yet both held back from pushing the button because they feared the consequences of nuclear entanglement. (Kennedy’s military advisers informed him there would be 600,000 American casualties if a single missile reached a major U.S. city.) Plokhy dives deep into the events leading up to the crisis, documenting Khrushchev’s boasts and lies as he used the threat of escalating tensions in Berlin to “distract attention from Cuba.” Drawing on firsthand accounts, Plokhy also spotlights the Soviet military personnel who arrived in Cuba to unload and prepare the missiles for deployment, unaware of the high-level diplomatic maneuvers to defuse the conflict, and describes how Khrushchev attempted to assuage Fidel Castro’s wrath when the Cuban leader learned the Soviet missiles wouldn’t stay on the island. Though the storytelling bogs down in places, history buffs will savor this balanced and richly detailed look at both sides of the crisis. (Apr.)
Sunday Times (UK) - Max Hastings
"The story is extraordinary, and Plokhy is an accomplished narrator....This account is probably as authoritative a version of the Soviet side as we are likely to get."
The Economist
"What makes this the definitive history is Mr. Plokhy’s telling of the tale in gripping detail from the Soviet perspective....It is the picture Mr. Plokhy paints of the complete failure of the key decision-makers to get inside the minds of their counterparts that is most telling....With his masterly book, Mr. Plokhy has sounded a warning bell."
Wall Street Journal - James Rosen
"Superb.... an immense scholarly achievement, engrossing and terrifying, and surely one of the most important books ever written about the Cuban Missile Crisis and 20th century international relations."
William Taubman
"If you think the story of the Cuban missile crisis has been told so often that nothing remains to be learned, think again! Drawing on KGB documents preserved in Ukrainian archives and Soviet military memoirs, as well as American documents and Cuban materials, Serhii Plokhy’s almost hour-by-hour account freshly illuminates mistakes by the Kremlin and the White House that triggered the crisis and snafus at sea and in Cuba that almost sparked a nuclear war, while drawing ominous lessons for our own once again hair-trigger nuclear age."
Financial Times - Victor Sebestyen
"Arguably the most authoritative and cleverly written work on the subject yet produced. Packed with fresh information from newly declassified Russian sources, including a KGB archive no researcher has previously accessed.... Gripping."
New Republic - Andre Pagliarini
"A magisterial work based on a bevy of U.S. and Soviet archival sources, including previously classified KGB documents. The perspective Plokhy provides exposes the perverse incentives that fueled dangerous nuclear power plays during the Cold War and, he suggests, beyond."
starred review Booklist
"Paint[s] a clearer picture of the behind-the-scenes machinations, the motivations, the politics, and the errors in judgment that almost brought about a nuclear holocaust. Plokhy pulls it all together with sober yet accessible prose that reads like a suspenseful thriller. For anyone interested in the Cold War, this is an indispensable read."
Max Boot
"[Plokhy] provides fresh and horrifying new details.... Finishing this sobering account, I could not help but think of the dangers that exist today from nuclear standoffs involving Pakistan, India, China, North Korea and the United States."
Michael Dobbs
"An excellent overview of the Cuban missile crisis from one of America’s leading Cold War historians. Serhii Plokhy has mined previously untapped Soviet archives to shed new light on the thirteen days that brought the world closer than ever before to nuclear destruction, and the pivotal roles of John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. A thrilling read that justifies his sobering conclusion: we may not be so lucky next time."
Anne Applebaum
"Nearly sixty years after the Cuban missile crisis, Serhii Plokhy, the author of multiple groundbreaking books on Soviet history, once again uses newly released KGB archives to offer a new perspective: In gripping, granular detail, he shows us just how close the United States and the Soviet Union came to Armageddon. At a moment when nuclear technology is still spreading, Nuclear Folly reminds us of the danger we all still face."
Library Journal
★ 02/01/2021
The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was not an exercise in rational diplomacy, but rather a series of blunders by President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, claims Plokhy (history, Harvard Univ.; Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front). The book's strength, based on the author's deep research of newly declassified records, shows how the Crisis played out in the Soviet Union and Cuba. Kennedy grossly underestimated the number of communist troops. Conversely, Khrushchev underestimated Kennedy's resolve, believing that the young president could be bullied based on the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco. Cuban Premier Fidel Castro, enraged by Khrushchev for not consulting with him but negotiating directly with Kennedy, pushed for a nuclear attack on the U.S. Plokhy concludes that Khrushchev tried to spin the Missile Crisis as a victory for world communism because Kennedy did not invade Cuba. However, the rest of the world, including the Soviet Union, viewed Kennedy as the victor. Two years later Khrushchev was removed from power by the Soviet Central Committee. VERDICT This important, absorbing work shows that the full story of the Cuban Missile Crisis must be told from its global perspective. See Martin Sherwin's Gambling with Armageddon for another account that places the Crisis in its Cold War context.—Karl Helicher, formerly with Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2021-01-23
A fresh examination of the historical milestone.
On the heels of last year’s highly praised Gambling With Armageddon, Plokhy, Harvard professor of Ukrainian history, covers similar ground in this companion volume. From John F. Kennedy’s humiliation after the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion to Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s 1962 humiliation when he withdrew Soviet missiles from Cuba, “both Kennedy and Khrushchev marched from one mistake to another…caused by a variety of factors, from ideological hubris and overriding political agendas to misreading the other side’s geostrategic objectives and intentions, poor judgment often due to the lack of good intelligence, and cultural misunderstandings.” Although delighted after the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro had no doubt that America would try again and appealed for Soviet protection. Khrushchev accepted because he was losing the arms race with the U.S. He argued that “since the Americans have already surrounded the Soviet Union with a ring of their…missile installations, we should pay them back in their own coin.” Having detected the missiles in October 1962, Kennedy believed they should be removed, and the debate was between air strikes and an invasion. Shocked at America’s reaction, Khrushchev backpedaled. Most readers know that he ultimately withdrew the missiles in exchange for an American promise to remove missiles from Turkey. Despite a plethora of speeches, diplomatic notes, and editorials, Plokhy keeps the pages turning, and he includes far more Soviet material than earlier scholars. Surprisingly, Kremlin archives contain notes and transcripts of Khrushchev’s secret discussions that parallel Kennedy’s, and there is also no shortage of memoirs. Soviet soldiers hated Cuba and raged at laboring to build the sites just to tear them down. Plokhy concludes that both sides assumed that nuclear war meant the end of civilization, so they relented. Unfortunately, he adds, “there is little doubt that today there are world leaders prepared to take a more cavalier attitude.”
Far from the first account but superbly researched and uncomfortably timely.
