Abyss

Abyss reconstructs the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when the deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles to Cuba produced the most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War. Max Hastings follows the crisis from Moscow, Washington and Havana, placing Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro alongside military officers, pilots, diplomats and civilians who experienced events without knowing whether decisions made over thirteen days might end in nuclear war.

The book broadens the familiar high-level story by examining the Cuban Revolution, the Bay of Pigs, Soviet military planning and the dangerous degree of autonomy sometimes exercised by forces in the field. Hastings emphasises miscalculation and uncertainty rather than treating the peaceful outcome as inevitable. It is nonfiction political and military history.