"A dramatic re-creation and urgent examination of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nearly thirty years after the end of the Cold War, today's world leaders are abandoning disarmament treaties, building up their nuclear arsenals, and exchanging threats of nuclear strikes. To survive this new atomic age, we must return to the lessons of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War: the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nuclear Folly offers an international perspective on the crisis, tracing the tortuous decision-making that produced and then resolved it, involving John Kennedy and his advisers, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and their commanders on the ground. More often than not, the Americans and Soviets misread each other, operated under false information, and came perilously close to nuclear catastrophe. Despite these errors, nuclear war was avoided for one central reason: fear. Serhii Plokhy masterfully illustrates the drama and anxiety of those tense days, and provides a way for us to grapple with the problems posed in our present day"-- Provided by publisher.

Apprentice -- Master of the game -- Triumph of communism -- Rocket man -- Going nuclear -- Operation Anadyr -- High seas -- Prisoner of Berlin -- Tip-off -- Honeymoon -- "Wipe them out" -- Quarantine -- Moscow night -- Blinking in the dark -- Wooden knife -- The Americans are coming! -- Turkish quagmire -- Losing control -- "Target destroyed!" -- Secret rendezvous -- Bermuda Triangle -- Sunday scare -- Winners and losers -- Indignation -- Mission impossible -- Back at the barricade -- Thanksgiving.