MARTIN J. SHERWIN, was University Professor of History atGeorge Mason University andthe author of A World Destroyed- Hiroshima and Its Legacies, winner of the Stuart L. Bernath and the American History Book prizes, and the coauthor, with Kai Bird, of American Prometheus- The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2006 as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Duff Cooper Prize.He died in 2021.
**Kirkus Reviews "The Best Books of the Year"**
“[This] book should become the definitive account of its subject.”
—The New York Times
“In this riveting book, Sherwin provides a fresh and thrilling
account of the Cuban Missile Crisis and also puts it into
historical perspective. With great new material, he shows the
effect of nuclear arms on global affairs, starting with the
decision to bomb Hiroshima. It is a fascinating work of history
that is very relevant to today’s politics.” —Walter Isaacson,
author of Leonardo da Vinci
“Engrossing . . . Forget everything you think you know about how
close the world came to nuclear war, then read this superb new book
that completely upends the mythology of those critical weeks in
October 1962 . . . From the opening pages [Sherwin] draws the
reader into the immediacy of the Crisis . . . Should make everyone
who reads it and was born after October 1962 extremely thankful to
be alive.” —Jerry D. Lenaburg, New York Journal of Books
"Intricately detailed, vividly written, and nearly Tolstoyan in
scope, Sherwin’s account reveals just how close the Cold War came
to boiling over. History buffs will be enthralled.” —Publishers
Weekly (starred review)
“A fresh examination of the Cuban missile crisis and its wider
historical context, showing how the U.S. avoided nuclear war . . .
Makes it clear how national leaders bumbled through the crisis,
avoiding nuclear Armageddon through modest amounts of wisdom mixed
with plenty of machismo, delusions, and serendipity . . . A
fearfully convincing case that avoiding nuclear war ‘is contingent
on the world’s dwindling reservoir of good luck.’” —Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)
“Examines nuclear policy as it evolved in the Cold War, culminating
with the chillingly suspenseful week-long drama of the Cuban
Missile Crisis . . . Grounded in an exceptional and up-to-date
knowledge of the military, diplomatic, and individual components of
American and Soviet politics.” —Mark Levine, Booklist (starred
review)
“In Gambling with Armageddon Martin J. Sherwin summarizes the
‘official’ narrative of the ‘thirteen days’ as follows. Members of
ExComm, through ‘their careful consideration of the challenge,
their firmness in the face of terrifying danger, and their wise
counsel,’ steered the world to a peaceful resolution of a
potentially civilization-ending conflict. Nothing, he writes,
‘could be further from the truth.’” —Elizabeth Kolbert, The New
Yorker
“One of our ablest chroniclers of the larger-than-life
personalities and lasting environmental effects of the nuclear
age.” —Marc Ambinder, The American Scholar
“A thrilling account of the tension-filled days when the world
teetered on the edge of nuclear apocalypse. Drawing on new sources,
Martin Sherwin shows how the Cuban missile crisis grew out of the
nuclear sabre-rattling of the Cold War, going all the way back to
the early confrontations between Truman and Stalin. No one is
better equipped to tell this story than Sherwin, who has devoted
his life to thinking about Armageddon, as witnessed by his
ground-breaking biography of Robert Oppenheimer. A splendid
accomplishment and a great read!” —Michael Dobbs, author of One
Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of
Nuclear War
"Gambling with Armageddon will have a powerful and lasting impact
because it does things that no other study does in an area that
could not be more significant. Sherwin makes clear that the Cuban
missile crisis was not really an aberration but an unsurprising
outcome of the history and psychology world leaders brought to the
weapons. We also learn how much mere chance—good luck—saved us from
world-ending catastrophe. Sherwin has written a book that matters
deeply, and has made an elegantly convincing argument for the
abolition of nuclear weapons." —Robert Jay Lifton, author of Losing
Reality
“This is what happens when one of the pioneers of nuclear
history—one who researches broadly, thinks deeply, and writes
beautifully—comes to grips with the most dangerous moment in human
history. The result gives us a new understanding of the Cuban
Missile Crisis in the broader context of the nuclear age and
reminds us, even decades later, how dangerous our nuclear arsenals
remain. Gambling with Armageddon is essential reading.” —Philip
Nash, author of The Other Missiles of October: Eisenhower, Kennedy,
and the Jupiters, 1957-1963
“Martin Sherwin’s beautiful account shows how the crisis grew out
of the brinkmanship of the Cold War. He brings to life the main
characters and examines with a marvelous combination of empathy and
a critical intelligence, the decisions that Kennedy and Khrushchev
faced and the choices they made. This is by far the best book on
the crisis and a book of great relevance for today.” —David
Holloway, author of Stalin and the Bomb
“It is difficult to believe that there is something fresh to say
about the Cuban Missile Crisis. But Martin Sherwin has accomplished
this feat. By meticulously reconstructing the decision-making
process of October 1962 and placing the crisis fully in the context
of Cold War atomic diplomacy he enables us to understand how the
world came to the brink of destruction, how unprepared political
and military leaders were for the crisis, and how level-headed
officials rejected the fantasies of would-be warriors and drew back
from disaster. And all this is presented with drama, eloquence, and
even humor.” —Eric Foner, author of The Second Founding
“People describe ‘news you can use.’ Well, here’s ‘history you can
use.’ Who knew that events 58 years ago could so resonate with
events today? And, no doubt, tomorrow. I've read
countless tomes on the Cuban Missile Crisis, and
wrangled about it personally with Fidel Castro in 1994. But no one
has, or could, recite and re-interpret those terrifying days
as well as Martin Sherwin. In a nutshell, this is a marvelous
book—riveting, revealing, quite remarkable. I stand awed by
the scholarship, and the beautiful writing. Though Dr. Sherwin and
I differ ideologically (by alot!), I find this book totally fair,
and beautifully balanced. So read the book, and you, too, will be
educated, entertained, and inspired.” —Kenneth Adelman, Reagan Arms
Control Director and author of Reagan at Reykjavik
"Martin Sherwin has set the standard for writing the history of the
ultimate weapons, the atomic and nuclear bombs. This book, his
magnum opus, exploits U.S., Russian, and other recently opened
documents to give the 1945 to early 1962 background, and the
potentially cataclysmic debates and diplomatic exchanges of the
Cuban missile crisis itself. That crisis continues to be the
historical reference point for our current debates about the
possibility of nuclear war. The 1962 events produced sleepless
nights for Americans, and so can reading this book about how
close the Americans and Russians came to creating nuclear
winter on earth." —Walter LaFeber, Andrew H. and James S.
Tisch Distinguished University Professor, Emeritus, Cornell
University
"A page-turning account . . . Offers a masterful reinterpretation
of the first decades of the Cold War. Switching perspectives
gracefully between American and Soviet officials, going up and down
the ranks from statesmen to second lieutenants, Sherwin distills
decades of reading, writing, and thinking into a chilling,
persuasive—and suspenseful—book." —David C. Engerman, Leitner
Profressor, Department of History, Yale University
“Gambling with Armageddon puts the Cuban Missile Crisis in the
proper historical context of the Cold War. Thoroughly
researched, and relying on Russian, Cuban, and American sources, it
makes a convincing case that only plain dumb luck saved the world
back in 1962. A historical tour de force with important lessons for
the next, impending nuclear arms race.” —Gregg Herken, author of
Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert
Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller
“Martin Sherwin is one of the great historians of the nuclear age .
. . Through a vivid and definitive retelling of the Cuban Missile
Crisis, based on the latest declassified sources, Sherwin explores
how hundreds of millions of lives could easily have been lost. The
implications of the story are inescapable." —Eric Schlosser, author
of Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and
the Illusion of Safety
“Brilliant, powerful and terrifying, Sherwin’s book on the Cuban
Missile crisis highlights how close we came to blowing up our
planet, how fortunate we were that Kennedy and Khrushchev managed
to save us, and how critical it is to have prescient leaders.”
—William H. Chafe, Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History,
Emeritus, Duke University
"Gambling with armageddon offers a precious, powerful and detailed
historical examination of the limits of leaders' control over
nuclear crises and the role of luck in their outcomes. Examining
the first seventeen years of the nuclear age and shedding new light
on the Cuban Missile Crisis, it teaches scholars and citizens alike
that our tendency to fall for retrospective illusions of control
and understanding is inadequate, dangerous and that the leaders of
the time were not exempt from them. It also masterfully
demonstrates that factors beyond control can and should be studied.
This has profound implications for scholarship and policy.” —Benoît
Pelopidas, founding director of the Nuclear Knowledges program,
SciencesPo, Centre de Recherches Internationales
"Masterly, marvellously sculpted narrative, by a leading nuclear
historian, this book is more about moral responsibility and decency
than about power. The author reminds us how Americans and Russians
made each other, and the mankind, hostages to basic human instincts
and dumb luck. A must read for today’s world leaders.” —Vladislav
M. Zubok, author of A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold
War from Stalin to Gorbachev
“Not only does this book offer a new and thrilling day-by-day
account of the Cuban missile crisis, but it also places it in the
wider perspective of the preceding nuclear arms race. Written with
verve and style, Gambling with Armageddon switches the dramatic
action from the Oval Office of Kennedy’s White House, to the heart
of Khrushchev’s Politburo in Moscow, then to the cockpit of US U-2
flights over Cuba, and to the stifling confines of the
nuclear-armed Soviet submarines patrolling the Caribbean Sea.
Provocative in tone and sweeping in scope, this is a book worthy of
the seminal crisis of the nuclear age.” —Matthew Jones, Professor
of History, London School of Economics
“A blow-by-blow account of the most dangerous crisis of the nuclear
age, which incorporates all the latest archival findings and
weaves them together into a masterful, gripping narrative.
Above all, Marty Sherwin offers a deeply original, and profoundly
disquieting, interpretation of the Cuban missile crisis.” —Leopoldo
Nuti, Professor of History of International Relations, Roma Tre
University
“A thrilling read . . . This book takes us as close as we will ever
get to the people whose judgments or insights determined the fate
of 200 million people in a nuclear war.” —Thomas Leonard, Professor
of History of Journalism, Emeritus, and Librarian, University of
California, Berkeley
“A great achievement that should generate intense discussion not
only about what now appears to be the dim past, but also about the
kinds of people we now entrust our survival to . . . I found myself
(almost) wondering if the world would in fact be destroyed, and was
quite relieved when the answer was no . . . A remarkably good book
in every way.” —Sanford Levinson, W. St. John Garwood and W. St.
John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law, University of Texas at
Austin
“Evocative, compelling, interpretive . . . a tour de force. Sherwin
makes the crisis so vivid. He clarifies beautifully what was
happening meeting by meeting, what were the options, what were the
ambiguities . . . Far and away the best book on the crisis.”
—Melvyn Leffler, Edward Stettinius Professor of History, Emeritus,
University of Virginia
“A landmark work of history, transforming an all-too-familiar saga
into a gripping full account never seen before — one never
more needed than today. Sherwin’s meticulous reading of the nuclear
past can help rescue the human future. This is history that can
save lives.” —James Carroll, author of House of War
“Who needs a VR (virtual reality) program to experience the
heart-throbbing tension of the Cuban Missile Crisis when you can
just read this amazing account by the preeminent nuclear historian
of our era. This is the most riveting book about our nuclear
history that I have ever had the good fortune to read. It
transports the reader deep into the bowels of the US and Russian
war-making machinery and captures the human emotions that animate
one unexpected turn after another, and provides the larger context
needed to put the drama in historical perspective. It will
change the way you think about how blundering into nuclear
Armageddon was and is beyond human control. As long as these
weapons exist on earth, human destiny will depend on history’s roll
of the dice.” —Bruce Blair, author of The Logic of Accidental
Nuclear War
"Brilliant . . . Shows that leaders such as Kennedy, Khrushchev and
Castro were stymied and constrained—often without even realizing
it—by events beyond their control and by the faulty logic of
nuclear strategy. In gripping chapter after gripping chapter,
Sherwin makes abundantly clear the countless ways that things could
have gone terribly wrong, but somehow did not. We are left
wondering whether we can count on being so lucky the next time the
world stands on the brink of Armageddon." —Ethan M. Pollock,
Professor of History and Slavic Studies, Brown University
"A magisterial historical reckoning, Martin Sherwin’s Gambling with
Armageddon details the 'long Cuban Missile Crisis' from 1945 to
1962. Applying the extensive knowledge and scholarship acquired in
almost six decades of exploring the perils of nuclear weapons,
Sherwin casts an astute eye on the fallible leaders who avoided
mass destruction through luck and belated recognition of the need
to avoid the world-destroying consequences of nuclear war."
—Dolores Janiewski, Profressor of American History, Victoria
University, New Zealand
"Seventy-five years after the end of WW II with the atomic bombings
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and thirty years after the end of
the Cold War, fears of a nuclear apocalypse have largely faded
away. Martin Sherwin’ s compelling book reminds us that the world
remains in peril from a nuclear holocaust. His book is a wake up
call to people everywhere that no one can be trusted with
these weapons of mass destruction. It is a reminder of
novelist Jules Romaine’s observation that WWI made clear that men
can be made to do anything!" —Robert Dallek, Professor of History,
Emeritus, UCLA
"Uncovers the shocking, nail-biting history of how close we came to
nuclear war in the years between 1945 and 1962, and how a
combination of chance, luck, accident and decision-making averted a
catastrophe. In vivid and dramatic prose, Martin Sherwin tells what
happened behind the scenes in the halls of power in the Soviet
Union and the United States, under water in Soviet and US
submarines, and in the thoughts and conversations of those who held
the fate of the world in their grasp." —Elaine Tyler May, Regents
Professor of American Studies, University of Minnesota
"Written in a style that reminds one of 'Seven Days in May,' Martin
Sherwin shows how atomic weapons shaped American foreign policy
before and during the Cuban missile crisis. He gives us the
story of Kennedy's hour-by-hour changing attitude during
critical Ex-Comm debates, and documents for the first time the key
role Adlai Stevenson played in influencing the president's
decisions toward a diplomatic solution." —Lloyd
Gardner, Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History,
Emeritus, Rutgers University
“Prodigious research, terrific writing, wonderful vignettes. and
clever images . . . The story is compelling from the very
beginning, with Truman at Potsdam . . . Sherwin’s personal
involvement is there in just the right dose and right tone.” —Janet
Lowenthal, Tzedek DC
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
