The Cuban Missile Crisis

On October 16, 1962, John F. Kennedy was shown aerial photographs of Soviet missile sites under construction in Cuba. For the next thirteen days, the United States and the Soviet Union stood closer to nuclear war than at any other moment of the Cold War.

Walter Briggs reconstructs what Kennedy knew at each stage of the crisis, what he didn’t, some of which came out only decades later, and how he chose a way out that avoided war.