The Cuban missile crisis, 1962: A National Security Archive documents reader - Softcover

Just over 30 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, newly released documents reveal how the world came dangerously close to nuclear destruction in 1962, and challenge the official history of the event as a model of crisis management. This collection of formerly secret records - including correspondence between John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, as well as intelligence reports, minutes and cables - provides a unique fly-on-the-wall view of the policy decisions and operations that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. The editors have provided a document-by-document account of the most important superpower confrontation of the 20th century. This is the first in a series from the National Security Archive that combines a rich selection of primary documents, drawn from thousands of pages obtained by the Archive through the Freedom of Information Act, with a detailed chronology, biographies of the key officials in Moscow, Washington, and Havana, and a comprehensive bibliography. The result is a resource for teachers and students as well as all those interested in current affairs and international relations.