Dedication
Epigraph
Foreword by Peter Almond
Introduction. Armageddon in Retrospect: “Carrying the Fire” of the
Cuban Missile Crisis Into the 21st Century
Cast of Characters. Three Leaders/Three Crises
Prelude. Sleepwalk: April 1961-October 1962
Act I. Collision: October 22, 23 1962
Act II. Spiral: October 23-28 1962
Act III. Escape: October 27-31 1962
Act IV. Squeeze: October 30 1962-November 20 1962
Postscript. Hope: December 10 1962-October 15 2010
Appendix A. The Armageddon Time Machine/Text: Acquiring the
Letters
Appendix B. The Armageddon Time Machine/Context: Bringing the
Letters Back to Life
Credits
Endnotes
Acknowledgements
The Authors
Index
James G. Blight is theCenter for International Governance
Innovation Chair in Foreign Policy Development at the Balsillie
School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo, in
Ontario, Canada.
janet M. Lang isresearch professor at the Balsillie School of
International Affairs, University of Waterloo in Ontario,
Canada.
Blight and Lang (Balsillie Sch. of International Affairs;
coauthors, Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived) present a
controversial investigation of the Cuban Missile Crisis, taking an
approach they call “critical history,” in which discussions with
players and rigorous analysis of primary documents are used to
construct first-person narratives showing how Kennedy, Khrushchev,
and Castro led their nations and interacted with each other
(Kennedy with Khrushchev and Khrushchev with Castro). The authors
claim that this is not fiction since facts are presented as they
are known and no people, events, or scenarios are invented. The
book is centered on 43 “Armageddon letters,” declassified between
1990 and 2005, which reveal that both Kennedy and Khrushchev tried
to avoid a nuclear showdown, while Castro was willing to sacrifice
Cuba if the Soviet Union would bomb the United States in
retaliation. The book is divided into four acts, each one starting
with a “Theatrical Preview” overview, and each also accompanied by
a stark graphic story summarizing the text, with panels drawn by
Andrew Whyte and dialog written by Koji Mautani. A helpful website,
armageddonletters.com, amplifies the text. VERDICTThe book engages
the reader and offers insight into leadership during the
crisis.
*Library Journal*
The goal of The Armageddon Letters is to have the reader experience
the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis vicariously. Blight and Lang
(both, Univ. of Waterloo, Canada) provide a list of six points that
they argue will help the reader get into the minds of Kennedy,
Khrushchev, and Castro. These points are that Armageddon is
possible, is possible even if leaders are rational, can become
highly probable in a crisis, will likely occur inadvertently, and
remains virtually inevitable; as a result, nuclear weapons should
be abolished. The book is centered on 43 letters and other
communications among the three leaders that the authors use to
describe events that occurred during those tense thirteen days in
1962. The book is organized like a play with chapters denoting the
cast of characters, a prelude, acts 1 through 4, and a postscript.
The chapters also provide comic strip illustrations presenting
scenes of the key actors. The act chapters consist of the actual
letters of the leaders during the crisis with the authors providing
context that elaborates on events. The book includes a wealth of
companion material including a website
http://www.armageddonletters.com that offers additional information
in video and audio formats. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership
levels.
*Choice Reviews*
The Armageddon Lettersinnovatively and emotively. . . attempts to
reverse the presumed apathy of young people toward nuclear
holocaust. . . . [Blight and Lang] succeed as pioneers; their
transmedia presentation is a great means of waking up a new
generation to history and its lessons. ... Blight draws creative
connections that grab our attention. ... the authors achieve their
heartfelt intention of saturating us with warnings about a nuclear
disaster. This multimedia and transmedia project largely works. . .
. We are fortunate that we are sitting here now to read about
Armageddon, rather than having experienced it—and that second
chance is what Blight and Lang have so cleverly marketed to us.
*Journal of American History*
In October 1962, the world was literally on the eve of its
end—Armageddon. Yet, you are reading this book. Armageddon did not
happen. Statesmanship, strategy, and serendipity gave you this
opportunity to learn from this dramatic crisis, which is admirably
and lucidly re-told and portrayed in this book. You are thus
afforded the chance to make sure our successors will be alive to
read it and learn from it in decades to come.
*Jorge I. Dominguez, director of the Weatherhead Center for
International Affairs at Harvard University*
Tasty morsels from secret communicationsamong Kennedy,
Khrushchev,and Castro during the most dangerous confrontation in
recorded history.
*Graham Allison, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of
Government*
The Armageddon Letters is a tour de force that brings the Cuban
missile crisis harrowingly alive, and makes it relevant for our
current time. Based on nearly 30 years of path breaking
scholarship, it situates 43 well-chosen documents in both their
historical and human context, and enables the reader to probe
between the lines. Blight and Lang also make clear that the genesis
of the confrontation began long before October 1962, that the
potentially catastrophic circumstances lasted for three agonizing
weeks beyond the famous 13 days, and that Cuba’s threat calculus
and behavior had an effect on the both the crisis and its
aftermath. They thus laudably return Cuba to the Cuban missile
crisis story.
The Armageddon Letters will deeply engage both students and general
readers, because it uniquely focuses on the emotions of Kennedy,
Khrushchev and Castro as they faced what each perceived to be no
way out of an impending Armageddon. It will leave readers with the
appropriate lessons they should derive from the missile crisis: we
survived by luck, not skill; a similar crisis could well occur
again; we must rely on empathy, not a false rationality, if we hope
to avoid a future Armageddon.
*Philip Brenner, American University*
Relatively few people now alive recall the Cuban missile crisis of
October 1962, and even fewer understand what happened, what
thankfully did not happen, and why the crisis must not be allowed
to disappear into the mists of history. James Blight and janet
Lang, two innovative scholars who have long studied the crisis,
have written a book that is a giant step toward rendering the
events of October 1962 too memorable, too frightening, and too
personal ever to be forgotten. We were lucky that the inclination
of the leaders of the U.S. and USSR, Kennedy and my father, was not
to shoot first, then think, but was rather to do the opposite, to
first think, then think once more, and do not shoot at all. Had
either of them “shot first,” we would not be alive today and, in
that case, we would not have an opportunity to read this excellent
book. The portraits of President Kennedy, my father, Soviet
Chairman Nikita Khrushchev, and Cuban leader Fidel Castro are
intimate, totally believable and instructive. Based on decades of
careful research, this is a work of sober history that reads like a
horror novel with an almost miraculously lucky outcome. I could not
put it down.
*Sergei N. Khrushchev, Brown University; author of Khrushchev on
Khrushchev: An Inside Account of the Man and His Era, by His Son,
Sergei Khrushchev*
Three cheers for epistolary history. In these crafty but wondrously
expressive "Armageddon Letters" pen-pals Kennedy (dry, cool,
defensive) and Khrushchev (explosive, tricky, soulful) were writing
the bedrock literature of the nuclear age. There's a great gain of
intimacy in this telling of the story, and no sacrifice of
absurdity, no slighting of the essential madness in the nuclear
fantasy. Fifty years after the October weekend when human
civilization hung by a thread, Blight, Lang & Company are reminding
us irresistibly that the fantasy is not dead, the trap is still
lethal, the danger is not over—that a tiny fragment of the world's
nuclear arsenal could explode and end life on the planet
forever.
*Christopher Lydon, Host of Radio Open Source*
An innovative look at one of the most important crises of the
twentieth century. James Blight and janet Lang have devoted
themselves for a quarter century to chronicling the hidden details
of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This book is a brilliant new addition
to that work.
*Errol Morris, director of the Academy Award-winning 2004 film, The
Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara*
For over a quarter century Jim Blight and janet Lang have earned
the gratitude of scholars and the interested public by highlighting
and preserving the human dimension of the Cuban missile crisis, the
most dangerous moment of the twentieth century. With The Armageddon
Letters, they are now brilliantly connecting the IPad generation to
Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro and to the lessons of that near
nuclear catastrophe.
*Timothy Naftali, coauthor of "One Hell of a Gamble": Khrushchev,
Castro & Kennedy, 1958-1964*
In The Armageddon Letters, authors James Blight and janet Lang
provide readers with a front row seat to one of the most terrifying
horror stories of all time. Except this isn’t fiction—it’s real.
For 13 harrowing days in October 1962, the leaders of the United
States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba inadvertently brought the world
within a hairs breadth of nuclear catastrophe. Part historical
archive, part movie script, and part comic book, the Armageddon
Letters creatively transports the reader back in time, rapidly
moving us to and from Washington, Moscow, and Havana as if we were
at the epicenter of the crisis, sharing in the fear, determination,
and helplessness of its creators. There’s no one better than Jim
and janet to take us on this journey. Their tireless scholarship
over the past twenty-five years has revolutionized our
understanding of the crisis, revealing that the threat of nuclear
war was much greater than any of the participants could have
possibly imagined. The implications of this near miss with disaster
are clear. Beneath the seemingly stable veneer of the Cold War lies
the chaos of the Cuban missile crisis. So long as nuclear weapons
exist – and approximately 22,000 of them can still be found in nine
countries—the risk of catastrophe will remain. We lucked out fifty
years ago. We may not be so lucky next time.
*Kingston Reif, director of nonproliferation at the Center for Arms
Control and Nonproliferation*
A brilliant reconstruction of the most dangerous days in history
when thermonuclear war seemed all but inevitable. Based on a
quarter century of research, you see the crisis not only from
Washington, but also from Moscow and Havana. This book is filled
with lessons that can help avert Armageddon in our times.
*Bruce Riedel, senior fellow and director of the Brookings
Intelligence Project, and author of Deadly Embrace: Pakistan,
America and the Future of the Global Jihad*
Manga meets the Missile Crisis in this compelling book. Through a
creative mixture of illustrations, imagined conversations,
historical analysis, and the actual letters written by Kennedy,
Khrushchev, and Castro, Jim Blight and janet Lang enable readers to
intellectually understand and emotionally feel what happened in the
dark days of October 1962.
*Scott D. Sagan, Stanford University*
Jim Blight and janet Lang have written The Armageddon Letters after
having spent much of the last twenty-five years vicariously peering
into the abyss of Armageddon that was the Cuban missile crisis.
They demonstrate the inadequacies of analyzing the crisis in any of
the traditional ways, and instead provide us with a sophisticated
applied psychology that reads like a Stephen King horror novel, but
is thoroughly and painstakingly grounded in the historical record.
They have accomplished something never before attempted: channeling
as exactly as the historical record allows the raw experience of
the three leaders as they confronted a tangle of mutual
misunderstandings that could have resulted in the destruction of
the human race. The three interwoven narratives will shock you.
They will also demonstrate that the “stability” of mutual nuclear
deterrence that we have come to take for granted is a shaky
foundation indeed on which to ground humanity’s continuing
existence.
*Paul L. Wachtel, distinguished professor of psychology, City
University of New York at City College*
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