"It all began with a Russian ploy worthy of the horse at Troy." So begins Frankel's account of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. In October 1962, two men, Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy, stood locked in psychological combat, a hairbreadth from Armageddon. A former executive editor of the New York Times
and Pulitzer winner who covered Khrushchev's Moscow, Kennedy's Washington and Castro's Havana, Frankel blends his own notes with the most recent scholarship on the crisis. The result is a great story, told from different vantage points and filled with drama. While he concludes that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were never really on the brink of war, Frankel constantly reminds us of how high the stakes were; the balance of geopolitical power with Cuba, Berlin, Turkey and the solidarity of the NATO alliance were all at risk. Kennedy is presented as the unquestionable hero in this confrontation, a man full of imagination, capable of great cunning and equally adroit at outmaneuvering both his Russian and Republican foes. As his adviser McGeorge Bundy once observed, "[F]orests have been felled to print the reflections and conclusions of participants, observers and scholars" of the crisis. Though breaking no new ground, Frankel offers sobering lessons in leadership for the war on terrorism. Agent, Jane Gelfman.
(Oct.)
