Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis

Product Description

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer comes the first effort to set the Cuban Missile Crisis, with its potential for nuclear holocaust, in a wider historical narrative of the Cold War–how such a crisis arose, and why at the very last possible moment it didn’t happen.

In this groundbreaking look at the Cuban Missile Crisis, Martin Sherwin not only gives us a riveting sometimes hour-by-hour explanation of the crisis itself, but also explores the origins, scope, and consequences of the evolving place of nuclear weapons in the post-World War II world. Mining new sources and materials, and going far beyond the scope of earlier works on this critical face-off between the United States and the Soviet Union–triggered when Khrushchev began installing missiles in Cuba at Castro’s behest–Sherwin shows how this volatile event was an integral part of the wider Cold War and was a consequence of nuclear arms.
Gambling with Armageddon looks in particular at the original debate in the Truman Administration about using the Atomic Bomb; the way in which President Eisenhower relied on the threat of massive retaliation to project U.S. power in the early Cold War era; and how President Kennedy, though unprepared to deal with the Bay of Pigs debacle, came of age during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Here too is a clarifying picture of what was going on in Khrushchev’s Soviet Union. Martin Sherwin has spent his career in the study of nuclear weapons and how they have shaped our world
. Gambling with Armegeddon is an outstanding capstone to his work thus far.

Review

**Kirkus Reviews
“The Best Books of 2020”
**

“In this riveting book, Sherwin provides a fresh and thrilling account of the Cuban Missile Crisis and also puts it into historical perspective. With great new material, he shows the effect of nuclear arms on global affairs, starting with the decision to bomb Hiroshima. It is a fascinating work of history that is very relevant to today’s politics.”
—Walter Isaacson, author of Leonardo da Vinci

“Engrossing . . . Forget everything you think you know about how close the world came to nuclear war, then read this superb new book that completely upends the mythology of those critical weeks in October 1962 . . . From the opening pages [Sherwin] draws the reader into the immediacy of the Crisis . . . Should make everyone who reads it and was born after October 1962 extremely thankful to be alive.”
—Jerry D. Lenaburg, New York Journal of Books

“Intricately detailed, vividly written, and nearly Tolstoyan in scope, Sherwin’s account reveals just how close the Cold War came to boiling over. History buffs will be enthralled.” —
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A fresh examination of the Cuban missile crisis and its wider historical context, showing how the U.S. avoided nuclear war . . . 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 . . . A fearfully convincing case that avoiding nuclear war ‘is contingent on the world’s dwindling reservoir of good luck.’”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Examines nuclear policy as it evolved in the Cold War, culminating with the chillingly suspenseful week-long drama of the Cuban Missile Crisis . . . Grounded in an exceptional and up-to-date knowledge of the military, diplomatic, and individual components of American and Soviet politics.”
—Mark Levine, Booklist (starred review)

“In
Gambling with Armageddon Martin J. Sherwin summarizes the ‘official’ narrative of the ‘thirteen days’ as follows. Members of ExComm, through ‘their careful consideration of the challenge, their firmness in the face of terrifying danger, and their wise counsel,’ steered the world to a peaceful resolution of a potentially civilization-ending conflict. Nothing, he writes, ‘could be further from the truth.’”