One Minute to Midnight by Michael Dobbs

One Minute to Midnight by Michael Dobbs

In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear conflict over the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba. In this hour-by-hour chronicle of those tense days, veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs reveals just how close we came to Armageddon.

Here, for the first time, are gripping accounts of Khrushchev's plan to destroy the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo; the handling of Soviet nuclear warheads on Cuba; and the extraordinary story of a U-2 spy plane that got lost over Russia at the peak of the crisis.

Written like a thriller, One Minute to Midnight is an exhaustively researched account of what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called "the most dangerous moment in human history," and the definitive book on the Cuban missile crisis.

Michael Dobbs was a major adviser to John Major when he was voted out, and was by Ms Thatcher's side when she took her first steps into Downing Street as Prime Minister. In the interim, he was bombed in Brighton, expelled from Chequers, and blamed for the failure to obtain a Blair-Major discussion on television. He is presently a BBC TV current affairs broadcaster and one of the country's prominent political analysts.