One Minute to Midnight

The story of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 has been told many times, but this edition includes new research and documents that make it the most up-to-date book on the subject. Narrator Bob Walter has a steady, authoritative voice that he uses effectively to move this taut nonfiction thriller forward. To emphasize the key points in the narrative, he pauses effectively, a technique that enables us to absorb the complicated web of facts and personalities. Walter changes his voice only slightly to denote characters, appropriately allowing the text to speak for itself. At times, he seems close to crossing the line into melodrama, but, for the most part, he keeps his voice steady and his emotions in check. R.I.G. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Starred review from April 21, 2008
Washington Post
reporter Dobbs (Saboteurs) is a master at telling stories as they unfold and from a variety of perspectives. In this re-examination of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Dobbs combines visits to Cuba, discussions with Russian participants and fingertip command of archival and printed U.S. sources to describe a wild ride that—contrary to the myth of Kennedy’s steel-nerved crisis management—was shaped by improvisation, guesswork and blind luck. Dobbs’s protagonists act not out of malevolence, incompetence or machismo. Kennedy, Khrushchev and their advisers emerge as men desperately seeking a handle on a situation no one wanted and no one could resolve. In a densely packed, fast-paced, suspenseful narrative, Dobbs presents the crisis from its early stages through the decision to blockade Cuba and Kennedy’s ordering of DEFCON 2, the last step before an attack, to the final resolution on October 27 and 28. The work’s climax is a detailed reconstruction of the dry-mouthed, sweaty-armpits environment of those final hours before both sides backed down. From first to last, this sustains Dobbs’s case that “crisis management” is a contradiction in terms.