A fearfully convincing case that avoiding nuclear war “is contingent on the world’s dwindling reservoir of good luck.”
A fresh examination of the Cuban missile crisis and its wider historical context, showing how the U.S. avoided nuclear war.
As Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Sherwin writes, it wasn’t due to wise national leadership. In 1945, dazzled at being sole possessor of the atomic bomb, American leaders debated its role. According to the author, Harry Truman and his advisers concluded that it was the key to containing Stalin. But Stalin was not cowed, and the confrontation evolved into the Cold War. Matters came to a head in 1959, when Fidel Castro overthrew Cuba’s dictator, obsessing the Eisenhower administration during its last year and Kennedy’s throughout. After taking office, Kennedy learned that U.S.–recruited anti-Castro Cubans were training to invade Cuba. To his everlasting regret, he assumed that officials in charge knew what they were doing. When the invasion was clearly failing, advisers expected Kennedy to send in American troops to prevent an international humiliation. That Kennedy chose humiliation was a mark of statesmanship but also a painful lesson about trusting experts. Castro and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev assumed that America would try again, and, angered by U.S. missiles in nearby Turkey, Khrushchev decided that putting missiles in Cuba would balance matters. Sherwin comprehensively recounts events during October 1962, after U.S. reconnaissance discovered the missiles. Everyone, Kennedy included, assumed that this meant war. American nuclear forces were alerted, and two decisions to launch were averted at the last moment. The first to propose negotiation was U.N. ambassador Adlai Stevenson. More than most scholars—and Kennedy himself—Sherwin gives Stevenson credit for planting the idea. Most readers know that, in the end, Khrushchev withdrew the missiles, and the U.S. removed theirs from Turkey. Sherwin’s detailed, opinionated scholarship makes it clear how national leaders bumbled through the crisis, avoiding nuclear Armageddon through modest amounts of wisdom mixed with plenty of machismo, delusions, and serendipity. Future crises are inevitable, and the author clearly demonstrates how there are no guarantees they will turn out so well.
A fearfully convincing case that avoiding nuclear war “is contingent on the world’s dwindling reservoir of good luck.”Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-307-26688-0
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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