The Abyss

Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962

By: Max Hastings

Narrated by: Max Hastings, John Hopkins

Bestselling author Max Hastings offers a welcome re-evaluation of one of the most gripping and tense international events in modern history—the Cuban Missile Crisis—providing a people-focused narrative that explores the attitudes and conduct of Russians, Cubans, Americans, and a terrified world that followed each moment as it unfolded.

In The Abyss, Max Hastings turns his focus to one of the most terrifying events of the mid-twentieth century—the thirteen days in October 1962 when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war. Hastings looks at the conflict with fresh eyes, focusing on the people at the heart of the crisis—America President John F. Kennedy, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, and a host of their advisors.

Combining in-depth research with Hasting’s well-honed insights, The Abyss is a human history that unfolds on a wide, colorful canvas. As the action moves back and forth from Moscow to Washington, DC, to Havana, Hastings seeks to explain, as much as to describe, the attitudes and conduct of the Soviets, Cubans, and Americans, and to recreate the tension and heightened fears of countless innocent bystanders whose lives hung in the balance. Reflecting on the outcome of these events, he reveals how the aftermath of this momentous crisis continues to reverberate today.

Powerful, and riveting, filled with compelling detail and told with narrative flair, The Abyss is history at its finest.

Max NEVER Disappoints!

Content, perspective and insights are excellent as is the writing, pace. An enlightening listen that will amaze and terrify.

Must read.

Classic on strategic patience, risk and leadership during a deadly crisis. Lessons endure up to today.

The excellent writing and use of language. Also its bi partisan approach and relevance to todays challenges

Perhaps too many quotes from ordinary people but that was also sometimes a welcome change from the story if the daily events.

Not up to Hastings standard

Hastings is one of my favorite nonfiction authors. Unfortunately his own political views unnecessarily colored his presentation of events. As we’ve seen other authors suffer similar failings (Stephen King, Dan Silva, Steve Berry) who feel they must make clear their political ideology and criticism of opposing views, it seems entirely unclear why Hastings decided to infuse those into this book. He clearly is of an age where JFK did little warranting criticism and was an intellectual giant, while every other Republican President mentioned in the book were all lightweights and in the case of Eisenhower, apparently did nothing in 8 years but play golf, it became clear Hastings is a Dem and only Dems are capable of developing successful foreign strategy. It’s a lazy approach and especially disappointing as I’ve read many of his books without ever knowing his political views. Interestingly enough, even though he waxed philosophical about the dangers of nuclear war, for a book written in 2022, he completely ignored the dangers of the then sitting Dem President with zero comprehensible foreign strategy as being a prime example of the lack of a coherent nuclear policy. All in all, a disappointing book.

Brilliant.

No better book on this topic. Great detail you won’t go to jail for checking the mail if you go by rail or sail in a gale it’s quite a take it’s the final nail in the hail at Yale without kale without wail without a vail but you won’t get bail