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  • Abyss

  • The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962
  • By: Max Hastings
  • Narrated by: John Hopkins
  • Length: 19 hrs and 12 mins
  • 4.9 out of 5 stars (30 ratings)

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Abyss

By: Max Hastings
Narrated by: John Hopkins
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Publisher's Summary

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. Max Hastings deploys his accustomed blend of eye-witness interviews, archive documents and diaries, White House tape recordings, top-down analysis, first to paint word-portraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev’s Russia and Kennedy’s America; then to describe the nail-biting Thirteen Days in which Armageddon beckoned.

Hastings began researching this book believing that he was exploring a past event from twentieth century history. He is as shocked as are millions of us around the world, to discover that the rape of Ukraine gives this narrative a hitherto unimaginable twenty-first century immediacy. We may be witnessing the onset of a new Cold War between nuclear-armed superpowers.

To contend with today’s threat, which Hastings fears will prove enduring, it is critical to understand how, sixty years ago, the world survived its last glimpse into the abyss. Only by fearing the worst, he argues, can our leaders hope to secure the survival of the planet.

©2022 Max Hastings (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

Critic Reviews

‘Grabs from the get-go… as if this were the very best fiction’ Daily Mail

‘A brilliant, beautifully constructed and thrilling re-assessment of the most perilous moment in history’ Daily Telegraph

‘Frightening but hopelessly addictive’ The Times

What listeners say about Abyss

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Must read account of this troubling time

Gives insight and analysis from an almost 360deg. perspective on the actions and reactions of the main players, bit players and others to this potentially world ending catastrophe.

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Authoritative

Well researched and certainly feels like THE authoritative account of that terrible time. However I believe as an audiobook it was too laborious. It belongs more to a reference library than something to listen to. The main theme that human accidents can and might have happened comes through well and a lesson for all our political leaders. A must read fir all hegemonic powers.

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great story

better listening than reading big book yo hold listening much easier great account of Cuban missle crisis

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