One Minute to Midnight

Cuba's secret Soviet missile installation almost sparked a nuclear war with the US in 1962. Written like a thriller, One Minute to Midnight by Michael Dobbs is an hour-by-hour account of those tense days that accepts we were close to Armageddon. The book features gripping accounts of Khrushchev's failed plan to destroy the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, how Soviet nuclear warheads were handled on Cuba and an extraordinary story of a U-2 spy plane. 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.