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342 pages, Hardcover
First published September 7, 2021
Jimmy took the new coin and went back to playing stickball. He would be in college before he realized that he’d stumbled into a series of events that were moving the globe’s two great powers to the brink of the third - and final - world war.Fascinating personalities -
Khrushchev’s son Sergei, who was training to be a rocket scientist, asked his father why he didn’t roar to the world about the offensive and illegal American flights.And quite the Acknowledgements section -
Nikita told his son: “The weak complain against the strong.”
I’m especially grateful to Dr. Sergei Khrushchev, who generously agreed to answer my questions about those private talks he had with his father during the missile crisis. Dr. Khrushchev, who became a U.S. citizen in 1999, died in June 2020. Through his writing and lectures, he has given us insight into key moments of Cold War history that literally could not have come from anywhere else.This is impressively researched - I read all the notes in the back - and full of little, important details often unemphasized: the victims of the H-bomb testing, and JFK’s bad back and the recording equipment he used, and the heroes who tried to topple the Berlin Wall, and the Soviet show trials, and the CIA’s collaboration with a mobster.