Apocalypse row
Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis/ By Max Hastings/HarperCollins £30/ IVO DAWNAY
Any study of the Cuban missile crisis cannot avoid concluding that the world was lucky it happened when John F Kennedy was in the White House. Sixty years on, the fact that we are even alive to read about the days the world teetered on the brink of Armageddon is as a result of the cool decision-making of the charismatic young President. Thanks to his ability to keep his head when all about him were losing theirs, humanity survived. But it was a close-run thing. Just how close is revealed in Abyss, Max Hastings’s brilliant and jaw- dropping account. It reads like a thriller, even though we know the outcome. Yet, what amazes most was how randomly the Soviet Union and the US found themselves stumbling into the showdown and, once in it, how both sides staggered through it like blind men in a minefield. Kennedy does not come out...
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