Max Hastings’s graphic history tells the story of one of the most perilous moments in world history from the viewpoints of national leaders, Soviet officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots, and British disarmers. He deploys his accustomed blend of eyewitness interviews, archived documents and diaries, White House tape recordings, and top-down analyses first to paint word portraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev’s Russia, and John Kennedy’s America, then to describe the nail-biting thirteen days in which Armageddon beckoned. To contend with today’s threat, it is critical to understand how, 60 years ago, the world survived its last glimpse into the abyss. Only by fearing the worst, Hasting argues, can our leaders hope to secure the survival of the planet.