Abyss: World on the Brink, the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962

A Times History Book of the Year 2022

From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings, ‘the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis’—Daily Telegraph.

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation.

Max Hastings’s graphic new history tells the story from the viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots, and British disarmers. Hastings uses eyewitness interviews, archive documents, diaries, White House tape recordings, and analysis to portray Cold War experiences and the tense Thirteen Days where Armageddon was possible.

Hastings’s research reveals how, despite believing he was exploring a past event, the ongoing conflicts—like the Ukraine crisis—add a new immediacy to this history. The book emphasizes the importance of understanding the past to secure the future amidst the threat of a new Cold War.