Review: Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis by Robert F. Kennedy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this insider's recollection of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis as largely told from RFK with a length afterword by political scientists Richard E. Neustadt and Graham T. Allison. RFK was assassinated before his manuscript was complete and, to be sure, he could not have been completely forthcoming in 1968. Still, it is riveting tale of how close we came to nuclear war. Also here in the appendices is relevant documents including JFK pronouncements and correspondence between the President and Khrushchev. It is that discursive, even poetic, and at times contradictory set of Russian letters that makes me think there is a real story to be told of what was going on in the Kremlin. Hopefully, that will come out, some day.

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