One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

As a Cuban exile I was training for a job in Key West when the October Missile Crisis exploded. I was twenty, my wife nineteen and our baby three months old.
The narrow over-the-water highway connecting the mainland to Key West was closed to civilian trafic. Hundreds of missile launchers were transported from Homestead, Fl. to Key West along with tanks, troops and war materiel.In a matter of hours all stores ran out of stock, just like during a Cat.5 hurricane warning.
"One Minute to Midnight" is so accurate and well researched that reading it was like re-living the nightmare of those days.
We were horrified about what would happen in the event of a Castro missile attack, and the only time we felt safe was when we heard the American F-14 fighter jets flying overhead day and night.
This book is a perfect example of accurate and well written contemporary history. I highly recommend it.
It is stored in our library under the section "Memories of Exile"
Signed: Andrew J. Rodriguez, author of "Adios, Havana," a memoir.

The new details uncovered by Mr. Dobbs makes this a "must purchase" for anyone genuinely interested in this historical episode.

However, I must admit that, from an entertainment perspective, the first half of this book dragged a bit while the second half was much more riveting.

One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

Excellent reading, not only for those of us who lived through the Cuban Missile crisis;but It is a must for those too young to remember as well as any student of history .

The book reads like a novel. It is a thrilling and chilling story of what really went on during those 13 days or so in October of 1962. Mr. Dobbs did some amazing research and uncovered many things that heretofore were unknown.

After reading this, you will have a new appreciation for John Kennedy. If he were not president then; we might not be here now

Mr. Dobbs' detailed and enthralling account of the Cuban missile crisis is excellent--except for his postmortem in the final chapter where he glosses over the Kennedy Administration's numerous foreign policy blunders that led to the crisis (e.g., Bay of Pigs invasion, JFK's abysmal performance at the 1961 Vienna summit with Khrushchev, Operation Mongoose, etc.) and lauds Kennedy for his "restraint and sense of history." And he can't resist taking a gratuitous shot at the Bush Administration, stating that we are all very fortunate that George W. wasn't president in 1962. The irony of that observation is completely lost on Mr. Dobbs. Bush invades Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction and finds none; Kennedy's inexperience in foreign affairs and Camelot's irrational obsession with a toothless Black Knight (aka Castro) were the catalyst for the installation of WMDs in our own backyard which, in turn, precipitated a crisis that almost led to Armageddon. The best you can say about JFK's handling of the Cuban missile crisis is that he cleaned up his own mess. And if the United States had not possessed such a large technological and strategic advantage in nuclear weaponry--something that Messrs. Truman and Eisenhower deserve credit for--then, as Mr. Dobbs' book makes clear, there is a very good chance that Khrushchev would not have backed down and Kennedy's "restraint and sense of history" would not have counted for much. In the final analysis, JFK made some wise decisions in his handling of the crisis for which he deserves credit, but he was also very, very lucky, and history will not allow him to escape responsibility for those decisions by his administration that led to the crisis in the first place.

I thought the book was exstremly well written.I was particularly interested because my husband Chuck Maultsby was the U2 pilot that accidently overflew Russia during the Cuban Missile Crisis.I furnished information and a photograph of him to the author!