Critic Reviews
Great
Based on 12 reviews on
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.
UK-US libertarian comms hack.Pro-Rishi ('22);Blunt(‘16);Walker(‘12-'15);Rand(‘13);Perry(‘12);Fiorina(‘10);RNC spox(‘08)/Clarke/Cameron(‘05). I ❤️ Arsenal.
Passing on some book recommendations. In the last few weeks, I’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Bomber Mafia” and Serhii Plokhy’s “Nuclear Folly.” Loved the 2nd, didn’t love the 1st. Gladwell’s book tells an interesting story but he writes the phrase “bomber mafia” WAY TOO MUCH.
Craig Miller: award-winning writer/editor/radio rptr, cat dad, river rat, volunteer firefighter. PBS @NextAvenue, @KQEDScience alum, climate refugee.
@MichaelWWara @JavierBlas Haven't read the latter but _Guns_ seems timely. I just read in Serhii Plokhy’s _Nuclear Folly_ that it heavily influenced JFK's negotiations with Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis.
Host of the the CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor; novelist as John Calvin Batchelor. Above: MidSummer gardening with Gladiolas & Lillies opening.
1/8: How little both threatening and threatened sides knew of the other, 1962, 2023: 1/8: Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, by Serhii Plokhy https://t.co/vCXH36yIgQ via @Audioboom