The definitive account of a brief yet frightening period in global history.
One of the greatest living historians tackles the Cuban missile crisis.
In his long, distinguished career, Hastings has masterfully covered both world wars, the Korean War, and Vietnam. In his latest, he thoroughly explores a fraught set of circumstances that almost lead to World War III. He sets the scene with a highly illuminating description of the Cold War world in 1960. The Soviet Union, barely recovered from World War II, was no match for the wealthy U.S., but its flamboyant premier, Nikita Khrushchev had convinced the world that he commanded a massive intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal—although he didn’t. Fidel Castro’s seizure of power in Cuba in early 1959 made him popular in America for several months until he seized all American businesses and resorted to violence to maintain his position. When John F. Kennedy took office in January 1961, the purportedly covert action to overthrow Castro was underway. To his everlasting regret, Kennedy assumed that its organizers knew what they were doing. Delighted at crushing America’s Bay of Pigs invasion but certain there was more fighting to come, Castro appealed to the Soviets, who responded favorably. Aware of Russian shipments arriving in Cuba, Kennedy’s administration assumed that these contained conventional weapons until overflights photographed nuclear missile sites. Hastings does not hide his contempt for Khrushchev’s decision to send atomic weapons. Explanations exist because Khrushchev, his son, and many high-level officials wrote memoirs. All blamed him, but Khrushchev himself insisted that it was a sensible response to American missiles on his nation’s border. Early on in the crisis, almost everyone, Kennedy included, agreed to bomb strategic sites and invade, which would likely lead to war. Hastings argues that Kennedy prevented a catastrophic conflict by deciding that this was a bad idea. Instead, he ordered a blockade and sent a warning to Khrushchev, who withdrew the missiles. The author’s painfully insightful conclusion credits Kennedy with brilliant statesmanship but adds that most successors would have chosen war.
The definitive account of a brief yet frightening period in global history.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-298013-7
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (1900–45) collected his work from WWII in two bestselling volumes, this second published in 1944, a year before Pyle was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa. In his fine introduction to this new edition, G. Kurt Piehler (History/Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville) celebrates Pyle’s “dense, descriptive style” and his unusual feel for the quotidian GI experience—a personal and human side to war left out of reporting on generals and their strategies. Though Piehler’s reminder about wartime censorship seems beside the point, his biographical context—Pyle was escaping a troubled marriage—is valuable. Kirkus, at the time, noted the hoopla over Pyle (Pulitzer, hugely popular syndicated column, BOMC hype) and decided it was all worth it: “the book doesn’t let the reader down.” Pyle, of course, captures “the human qualities” of men in combat, but he also provides “an extraordinary sense of the scope of the European war fronts, the variety of services involved, the men and their officers.” Despite Piehler’s current argument that Pyle ignored much of the war (particularly the seamier stuff), Kirkus in 1944 marveled at how much he was able to cover. Back then, we thought, “here’s a book that needs no selling.” Nowadays, a firm push might be needed to renew interest in this classic of modern journalism.
Pub Date: April 26, 2001
ISBN: 0-8032-8768-2
Page Count: 513
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
A fresh perspective on a familiar subject.
The American Revolution reframed as “a world war in all but name.”
The struggle of 13 North American colonies for independence from Great Britain quickly turned into a global conflict, writes Bell, a professor of history at the University of Maryland. Patriot leaders cultivated the support of England’s major rivals, France, Spain, and the Netherlands, which began by covertly supplying the rebels with weapons and by 1779 were engaging in open warfare. French and Spanish fleets turned the Caribbean into a major battlefront, forcing England to send troops from North America to protect its precious “sugar islands,” while American privateers inflicted huge losses on British merchant ships and boosted the rebel colonies’ economy. A separate Spanish-British war in Florida and South America also weakened England’s attempt to suppress the independence, as did French efforts to incite revolts in India against British rule. The repercussions after Americans won their independence also extended beyond the Eastern seaboard. Spain and Britain both tightened their controls over remaining colonies. Native American tribes lost what little protection England had provided against white settlers’ incursions on their lands, which grew increasingly aggressive after independence. Enslaved African Americans who fought for Britain on the basis of promises of freedom were resettled first in Nova Scotia and then in Sierra Leone; their odyssey is the subject of a particularly fascinating chapter. Bell’s international emphasis occasionally leads him to overreach, as when he claims that the 1780 anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in London were “also an expression of popular opposition to the American war,” but his basic argument is sound (and there was considerable antiwar sentiment in England). Based on solid and deep research, his book is written in clear, accessible prose—with entertaining minutiae such as the fact that the minutemen at Lexington and Concord fired guns made in Spain—that will appeal to general readers with an interest in history.
A fresh perspective on a familiar subject.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593719510
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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