Kennedy Khrushchev And The Test Ban

"This is one of the most important books to come from a university press within the last year . . . Seaberg, Nobel Prize laureate, was chairman of the old Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) when the treaty was negotiated. With a decent time interval now past, he has opened the detailed diary he kept during his AEC tenure. Together with auxiliary materials, including interviews with other participants, he has now written an incisive account of events leading up to the treaty and of the negotiations and their successful conclusion."--Christian Science Monitor "Drawn from [Seaberg's] personal journal, this book focuses on Kennedy's quest for a comprehensive test ban and on why, 'despite some near misses, this glittering prize, which carried with it the opportunity to arrest the viciously spiralling arms race, eluded our grasp.' More than a memoir, the book draws upon documents and observations of other key participants .. . It also provides insights into Kennedy and his Administration as well as giving us the substance of the nuclear test ban debate. Mr. Seaberg is refreshingly fair in his assessment of the merits and failures of the limited treaty that Kennedy achieved."--New York Times "A detailed and absorbing history of what seems, in retrospect, the innocent and halcyon days of nuclear arms control. Seaberg rightly lays claim to having been an 'insider' in the test ban negotiations, and his first-person account benefits from close friendship with other Kennedy insiders . . . As might be expected, the book is most interesting for the light it throws upon the thoughts and actions of Kennedy; a surprise is its insight, reflected through the eyes of Kennedy and Harriman, into the personality of Khrushchev. . . Implicit in Seaborg's portrait of Khrushchev is a view which perhaps had some currency in the Kennedy administration but more recently seems to have fallen out of vogue--that it is possible to deal with the Russians."--Washington Post

"This is one of the most important books to come from a university press within the last year . . . Seaberg, Nobel Prize laureate, was chairman of the old Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) when the treaty was negotiated. With a decent time interval now past, he has opened the detailed diary he kept during his AEC tenure. Together with auxiliary materials, including interviews with other participants, he has now written an incisive account of events leading up to the treaty and of the negotiations and their successful conclusion."--Christian Science Monitor "Drawn from [Seaberg's] personal journal, this book focuses on Kennedy's quest for a comprehensive test ban and on why, 'despite some near misses, this glittering prize, which carried with it the opportunity to arrest the viciously spiralling arms race, eluded our grasp.' More than a memoir, the book draws upon documents and observations of other key participants .. . It also provides insights into Kennedy and his Administration as well as giving us the substance of the nuclear test ban debate. Mr. Seaberg is refreshingly fair in his assessment of the merits and failures of the limited treaty that Kennedy achieved."--New York Times "A detailed and absorbing history of what seems, in retrospect, the innocent and halcyon days of nuclear arms control. Seaberg rightly lays claim to having been an 'insider' in the test ban negotiations, and his first-person account benefits from close friendship with other Kennedy insiders . . . As might be expected, the book is most interesting for the light it throws upon the thoughts and actions of Kennedy; a surprise is its insight, reflected through the eyes of Kennedy and Harriman, into the personality of Khrushchev. . . Implicit in Seaborg's portrait of Khrushchev is a view which perhaps had some currency in the Kennedy administration but more recently seems to have fallen out of vogue--that it is possible to deal with the Russians."--Washington Post

A collection of 120 personal letters between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, kept secret until almost the year 2000, is published for the first time. They share congratulations about space achievements, mention vacations and share personal feelings and anecdotes.

The groundbreaking and revelatory tale of the most dangerous years of the Cold War and the two leaders who held the fate of the world in their hands. This bestselling history takes us into the tumultuous period from 1960 through 1963 when the Berlin Wall was built and the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the United States and Soviet Union to the abyss. In this compelling narrative, author Michael Beschloss, praised by Newsweek as “the nation’s leading Presidential historian,” draws on declassified American documents and interviews with Kennedy aides and Soviet sources to reveal the inner workings of the CIA, Pentagon, White House, KGB, and politburo, and show us the complex private relationship between President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Beschloss discards previous myths to show how the miscalculations and conflicting ambitions of those leaders caused a nuclear confrontation that could have killed tens of millions of people. Among the cast of characters are Robert Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Adlai Stevenson, Fidel Castro, Willy Brandt, Leonid Brezhnev, and Andrei Gromyko. The Bay of Pigs invasion, the Vienna Summit, the Berlin Crisis, and what followed are rendered with urgency and intimacy as the author puts these dangerous years in the context of world history. “Impressively researched and engrossingly narrated” (Los Angeles Times), The Crisis Years brings to vivid life a crucial epoch in a book that David Remnick of the New Yorker has called the “definitive” history of John F. Kennedy and the Cold War.

Drawing upon newly-released official and private papers, this book provides an intimate account of Anglo-American debates over one of the most grave and politically sensitive foreign-policy issues of the early 1960s. It examines the roles played by John F. Kennedy and Harold Macmillan in the test-ban negotiations between 1961 and 1963. It also describes the way in which contrasting domestic political imperatives and conceptions of how the Cold War could best be won, created tensions between the two allies. Nevertheless, they retained a broad unity of perspective and purpose, eventually producing the imaginative diplomacy that resulted in the signing of the Limited Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in August 1963.

For seven days in October 1962, the world held its breath. The Soviet Union and the United States were on the brink of a nuclear war. The two men in the center of the conflict, the Cuban Missile Crisis, were US president John F. Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. Readers will discover what events led to the crisis, how it was resolved, and the aftermath for the two world leaders and their countries. Primary-source quotations and photographs of unfolding events increase readers' suspense, while a timeline and bulleted facts present a comprehensible account of this important historic event.

An examination of the Cuban Missile Crisis analyzes the roles, objectives, and actions of John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev during the October 1962 showdown between the U.S. and Soviet Union.

Based on classified Soviet archives, including the files of Nikita Khrushchev and the KGB, "One Hell of a Gamble" offers a riveting play-by-play history of the Cuban missile crisis from American and Soviet perspectives simultaneously. No other book offers this inside look at the strategies of the Soviet leadership. John F. Kennedy did not live to write his memoirs; Fidel Castro will not reveal what he knows; and the records of the Soviet Union have long been sealed from public view: Of the most frightening episode of the Cold War--the Cuban Missile Crisis--we have had an incomplete picture. When did Castro embrace the Soviet Union? What proposals were put before the Kremlin through Kennedy's back-channel diplomacy? How close did we come to nuclear war? These questions have now been answered for the first time. This important and controversial book draws the missing half of the story from secret Soviet archives revealed exclusively by the authors, including the files of Nikita Khrushchev and his leadership circle. Contained in these remarkable documents are the details of over forty secret meetings between Robert Kennedy and his Soviet contact, records of Castro's first solicitation of Soviet favor, and the plans, suspicions, and strategies of Khrushchev. This unique research opportunity has allowed the authors to tell the complete, fascinating, and terrifying story of the most dangerous days of the last half-century.