 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | The unique, gripping account of the perilous showdown between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the thirteen days in October 1962 when the United States confronted the Soviet Union over its installation of missiles in Cuba, few people shared the behind-the-scenes story as it is told here by the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy. In a clear and simple record, he describes the personalities involved in the crisis, with particular attention to the actions and attitudes of his brother, President John F. Kennedy. He describes the daily, even hourly, exchanges between Russian representatives and American. In firsthand immediacy we see the frightening responsibility of two great nations holding the fate of the world in their hands. |
Average Customer Rating:   Facinating, quick memoir Thirteen Days is a fascinating look at the decision-making behind JFK's actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis. RFK writes about the sequence of events, the reactions of the President's advisers, and the rationales for the actions the President took.
It made me appreciate the weighty decisions any President faces, and it made me appreciate the value of cool heads and debate during a time of crisis.
This is a short book and a quick read. It's a first-person account, not an unbiased history - so don't expect it to be something it's not.
Thirteen Days: Cuban Missile Crisis, by Robert Kennedy Read the book several years ago and was convinced that the Russian ships turned around because they
were carrying the nuclear warheads that the Cuban Missiles were lacking. US had would have fired on them
had they not turned around! I am rereading the book to again familiarize myself with the US-Cuban episode.
Success in foreign policy is not a given. This book tells us a lot in 174 pages. Enjoyable Well-written, exciting, interesting tale of an interesting time. Writing is laconic but full of meaning. Extremely interesting historical analysis and discussion of the division of power between the executive and the legislative branches.
I am not a historian and cannot speak to the absolute accuracy of the contents - but it was a lot of fun to read, and certainly captured the spirit of the times. Narrow Escape The tale that Robert Kennedy lays down in Thirteen Days is a nail-biting modern thriller. It is difficult to imagine the state of the nation, and of the world, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The two greatest powers were ever at odds with each other, bubbling up into a dramatic crescendo. What would happen when the ships were told to halt outside of Cuba? Would the U.S.S.R. deliberately attack United States vessels and, ultimately, the mainland with nuclear weapons?
It is only with the gift of retrospection that we now know that it was by the diplomatic efforts of President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and the myriad of others present in countless meetings held during the crisis that certain destruction was thwarted. The fact that so many individuals sought to promote all-out war and mutually assured destruction is an eye-opener to the chaos that nearly transpired. The sheer audacity that the Soviets had to first deny that platforms and warheads were being constructed, then that they were not to be used offensively, clearly identifies the madness that consumed them. They behaved as a child would when interrogated by a parent for a wrongdoing. The parent knows what is going on but the child, in an almost belligerent tone, acts as the Soviets did. Thus it was with a steady hand that President Kennedy punished the child, and the Soviets were driven to return back to their side of the playpen. Anatomy of a Supreme Crisis..... "Thirteen Days" is Robert F. Kennedy's enthralling memoir of the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, during which the United States under President Kennedy and the Soviet Union under Chairman Khrushchev came breathtakingly close to nuclear war. At issue was the clandestine placement of Soviet medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba, just minutes flight time from most of the United States.
RFK wrote his memoir in 1967; it was published in 1968. The present edition, published in 1999, has four parts. First is a foreward by President Kennedy's in-house historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who frames RFK's memoir by what has been learned from the Russians since 1962, that nuclear war was even closer than the Kennedy administration feared in 1962.
Second is RFK's memoir itself, which recounts with the immediacy of a participant the struggle to find a solution to the crisis that did not guarantee a nuclear exchange. RFK was a member of the ExCom, which deliberated on policy options under guidance of the President. Subsequent scholarship has added details, but it is hard to beat RFK's keen observations of his brother's leadership and his own thoughtful appreciation of the moral aspects of the crisis.
Third is a dissection of the crisis by two noted scholars on decisionmaking, Richard Neustadt and Grahm Allison. Finally, there is a selection of key documents.
"Thirteen Days" is very highly recommended as a compact but fascinating account of the supreme crisis of the Cold War, and a major source of insight into the decisionmaking that is still considered a superlative model for crisis response. |  |
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