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Rating: 
Summary: deja vu
Review: A brilliant book, beautifully written and rigorously researched. It's also scary in its conclusions--and thoroughly plausible.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent subject, disappointing account...
Review: Disappointing...this book is one of the most extensively researched books that I've ever read, but that's only half the story. The mark of a good history book (in my opinion) is "readability" and this is where this book falls short. I found myself trudging through this, trying to disect the numerous new details brought out by the authors from both the American and Soviet side. When I was done, I usually had to re-read the section to get a firmer understanding and that to me is what makes up a classsroom textbook, not a good history book. There are better books on the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Beschloss..."The Crisis Years", Brugioni..."Eyeball to Eyeball...even May/Zelikow "the Kennedy Tapes") that I'd recommend before this.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent subject, disappointing account...
Review: Disappointing...this book is one of the most extensively researched books that I've ever read, but that's only half the story. The mark of a good history book (in my opinion) is "readability" and this is where this book falls short. I found myself trudging through this, trying to disect the numerous new details brought out by the authors from both the American and Soviet side. When I was done, I usually had to re-read the section to get a firmer understanding and that to me is what makes up a classsroom textbook, not a good history book. There are better books on the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Beschloss..."The Crisis Years", Brugioni..."Eyeball to Eyeball...even May/Zelikow "the Kennedy Tapes") that I'd recommend before this.
Rating: 
Summary: Very fine book on the most dangerous event of the Cold War
Review: If you are interested in finding out what the Cuban Missile Crisis was actually about and how it was conducted and resolved, this is a fantastic book. Not only do we get the context of what went on during the Eisenhower administration when Castro came to power, but we get the context of what was going on in the Soviet Union as well.I did not know that Raul Castro was the committed communist who advocated closer ties with the USSR. That Fidel was anti-US was always clear, but it was most interesting to read about how the connection between Cuba and the USSR developed and its limitations because of Fidel's undisciplined and independent nature. The back-channel diplomacy was also very interesting to read about and why we didn't learn about the Jupiter missile removal from Turkey until much later was another story I wanted to understand. For me, the most useful things I learned were the lurching and stumbling nature of the way the USSR and the US played off of and against each other. Not only were both sides trying to balance the other side, each side was also trying to be provocative as well. The book also notes that the Soviets saw the Kennedy assassination as the work of a far right wing conspiracy led by H.L. Hunt, although they had no real evidence but the word of journalist Paul Ward. They refused to believe that the President's security services could have allowed a lone madman to shoot the President (as was actually the case). The book ends with a brief discussion of coup that removed Khrushchev and put Brezhnev in power. The book is written very well and has a rich supply of notes and documentation backing up the story the authors report. I think it is a fascination and important book from the most dangerous period in the Cold War.
Rating:
Summary: Very fine book on the most dangerous event of the Cold War
Review: If you are interested in finding out what the Cuban Missile Crisis was actually about and how it was conducted and resolved, this is a fantastic book. Not only do we get the context of what went on during the Eisenhower administration when Castro came to power, but we get the context of what was going on in the Soviet Union as well. I did not know that Raul Castro was the committed communist who advocated closer ties with the USSR. That Fidel was anti-US was always clear, but it was most interesting to read about how the connection between Cuba and the USSR developed and its limitations because of Fidel's undisciplined and independent nature. The back-channel diplomacy was also very interesting to read about and why we didn't learn about the Jupiter missile removal from Turkey until much later was another story I wanted to understand. For me, the most useful things I learned were the lurching and stumbling nature of the way the USSR and the US played off of and against each other. Not only were both sides trying to balance the other side, each side was also trying to be provocative as well. The book also notes that the Soviets saw the Kennedy assassination as the work of a far right wing conspiracy led by H.L. Hunt, although they had no real evidence but the word of journalist Paul Ward. They refused to believe that the President's security services could have allowed a lone madman to shoot the President (as was actually the case). The book ends with a brief discussion of coup that removed Khrushchev and put Brezhnev in power. The book is written very well and has a rich supply of notes and documentation backing up the story the authors report. I think it is a fascination and important book from the most dangerous period in the Cold War.
Rating:
Summary: Simply a great book
Review: Naftali and Fursenko have done a excelent piece of research in this interesting book about the Cuban Missile Crisis. In particular, they highlight the close to insane policies of the Russian Government as they sought to bolster the Cuban regime from US attack. This book gives the whole picture including the bay of pigs and other US misadventures that drove Castro into the Soviet orbit. The most fascinating section for me was the part on Castro and way he was compelled to adopt Soviet style communism. The US simply did not leave him any choice. A balanced look at high powered diplomacy that had gone mad.
Rating:
Summary: An authoritative account of superpower brinkmanship
Review: Reviewed by Nigel Clive in International Relations, Volume XIV, No 1, April 1998 Aleksandr Fursenko is Chairman of the History Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Timothy Naftali is a Fellow in International Security Studies at Yale University. Their book, based on unprecedented research into Russian archives and exhaustive unearthing of official American documents, provides the most authoritative account of superpower brinkmanship before and during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which at its height was arguably the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. Their analysis explains how and why by 1960 the Cuban issue had come to define the superpower conflict as forcefully as the future of West Berlin or nuclear testing. Rightly, the story begins with what has often been forgotten: the popularity of Fidel Castro and his triumphant visit to America in April 1959, less than four months after over-throwing the Cuban dictator Batista. Castro's primary objective was to decrease American leverage over Cuban affairs, while the Kremlin was planning a covert operation to assist the Cuban army at the request of Fidel's brother, Raul Castro, who was a secret member of the Cuban Communist Party, a fact then unknown to Fidel. The opening of KGB and Presidium documents shows that Moscow was ready to do more for Castro than Castro felt it prudent to accept, given his domestic struggle for legitimacy. By March 1960, however, the explosion of a Belgian arms shipment in Havana harbour convinced Castro of the need for overt Soviet assistance to deter American intervention. By July 1960, Cuba had moved into the Soviet camp when Khrushchev gave a Soviet commitment to defend Cuba. From January 1961 Khrushchev identified his leadership of the communist world and the prestige of the Soviet Union with the health of Cuba and Castro.
Cuba was an immediate priority for John Kennedy in December 1960. On 12 April 1961, he assured the world that America did not intend to invade Cuba. This book gives a detailed description of the bungled Bay of Pigs operation later in April, which was largely caused by the failure to understand how essential air superiority would be to the success of the entire operation. Thereafter, Moscow took a commanding role in the Cuban security service. The choice of communism had been made by Raul in the early 1950s, by Che Guevara in 1957 and by Fidel in 1959. Now a proper police state had been set up at an eight-minute flight away from Miami. After the Bay of Pigs, the link between the Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the GRU (Military Intelligence) representative, Georgi Bolshakov, gave the Kremlin the best look inside the thinking of the Kennedy administration that any intelligence service could hope for. Notably, the KGB file on the younger Kennedy showed him to be more anti-Soviet than his brother. Cuban security intelligence, improved by the KGB, thwarted CIA and central American attempts to assassinate Fidel, Raul and Che Guevara in the summer of 1961. This prompted Castro in September 1961 to ask for increased Soviet military assistance. Moscow could see how the situation was heating up when John Kennedy made contact with Khrushchev's son-in-law and slyly compared his problem in Cuba with what Khrushchev had faced in Hungary before 1956. Kennedy wanted the problem to be solved without an American invasion, but his wish was opposed by the CIA..
In May 1962, Khrushchev discussed with his closest advisers in the Presidium the plan to put medium-range missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba. Although seriously criticized by Alexseev, the KGB representative in Cuba, the Presidium approved the missile proposal, which Khrushchev explained had the dual objective of demonstrating to Castro that the Soviet Union would defend his revolution, while reminding Washington of Soviet power. Castro interpreted the Soviet plan as a gesture to improve the position of the socialist camp in the international arena, not as a desperate ploy to prevent an American attack. In July 1962, the Kremlin used the Bolshakov link to warn against the use of American reconnaissance planes to photograph the cargoes on the ships making their way to Cuba. Before the end of the summer of 1962, Khrushchev instructed Bolshakov to explain to Robert Kennedy that the Soviet Union was placing defensive weapons in Cuba. He now took the line that the Soviet Union and America were equally strong, and in September 1962 he authorized the sending of six atomic bombs while emphasizing his control over their use. This meant that by the end of September 1962 Khrushchev and Kennedy were much closer to military action that they had ever wanted to be.
On 2 October 1962, Kennedy ordered the armed services to start preparing for military operations against Cuba. Three days later, Bolshakov claimed to Robert Kennedy that the weapons being sent to Cuba were defensive. In fact, he was not informed of the truth. Bolshakov lived to see the end of the Cold War, but he never got over his bitterness at having been used to deceive the Kennedys. On 16 October, a U-2 spotted two nuclear missiles and six missile transports south west of Havana. But on 20 October, from a divided Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ex Comm) the blockade group carried the day against those favouring an air strike. This was reflected in Kennedy's quarantine Radio/TV address on 22 October, while Robert Kennedy assured Khrushchev via Bolshakov that America had excellent evidence of the missile deployments. So by 25 October, Khrushchev decided to dismantle the missiles, conceding that a head-to-head struggle in the nuclear era could only bring devastation to the Soviet Union. His letter of 26 October to Kennedy was a climb down. The following day Moscow was informed from Havana that Cuba expected an American air strike in the immediate future. But Khrushchev stood apart from most of the Presidium in believing that America would not attack Cuba and he did not want to threaten nuclear war when it might actually lead to one. A negotiated settlement was now within reach, as Back Channel diplomacy seemed to have succeeded.
But Castro was furious that Moscow had cut a deal without consulting Havana, as Mikoyan soon learned at the start of his visit when no common ground could be found between the two. Indeed, by 16 November, Khrushchev was prepared to pull the plug on Soviet assistance. On 20 November, Kennedy announced that Moscow had agreed to withdraw their II/28 bombers within thirty days and in response America would lift its blockade. On Christmas day 1962, a Soviet ship quietly left Havana with the last of the tactical warheads. Khrushchev's anger with Castro subsided in January 1963 as he sent him a 27-page letter, which received mixed reviews in Cuba. However, in March 1963 Castro agreed to visit the Soviet Union where he stayed for a month and had several meetings with Khrushchev discussing Soviet policy in Algeria, Angola and Albania. Khrushchev also authorized military support for Cuba and renewed the nuclear guarantee that he had first made in the summer of 1960. In June 1963, Kennedy looked forward in his ground-breaking American University speech to an early agreement on a comprehensive test-ban treaty. The 'Hot Line' was also established. The Cuban missile crisis had passed into history; but Castro still loomed in the background as a potential obstacle to the achievements of the new Kennedy/Khrushchev relationship.
NIGEL CLIVE
Rating:
Summary: More exciting than a Clancy or DeMille book
Review: This book, with the benefit of research in Soviet archives, tells a fearsome story--more scary than living thru it, as I did, since we did not know what was going on in the corridors of power. It is pretty awesome to think that in Washington there were hawks who were in favor of invasion, apparently not knowing or not caring that atomic weapons would have been used to resist the invasion. I read Michael Beschloss' The Crisis Years on Oct 25, 2000, and it was a similar tension-filled read. The Kennedys come out in this book in the end looking pretty good--at least better than the LeMay types. But Kennedy bashers can find plenty in this book to revel in, also. It is a good book.
Rating:
Summary: Impressive and well-documented book
Review: This was an excellent impartial account of the Cuban Missile Crisis. No one is favored or criticized for their actions. Fortunately, the wiser heads on both sides ruled. There are some startling revealations as well. For instance: Castro was originally not a communist and we planned several invasions of Cuba.
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