The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis (review)

In 1962 the Soviet Union planted nuclear missiles in Cuba and President John F. Kennedy demanded their removal. Sheldon Stern offers a revealing window into the inner sanctum of the Kennedy administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis, arguing convincingly that Kennedy acted with great caution during one of the great showdowns of the cold war. At the time, a high-altitude spy plane could capture photos of intercontinental ballistic missile sites, and yet two-way communication between the White House and the Kremlin required several hours, and even the president of the United States could not get an entirely reliable audiotaping system. The tapes secretly made by Kennedy during the crisis illustrate the dangerous interplay that exists between flawed technology and fallible human beings.

Because there are distracting noises and overlapping conversations, there have been conflicting interpretations of what happened among those who advised Kennedy on possible strategies during the crisis. As a former historian at the John F. Kennedy Library, Stern was one of the first to hear many of the conversations taped by Kennedy during his White House years. He developed a good ear for their nuances and he tells the reader when a comment was shouted or muttered. By relying primarily on a narrative format instead of stark transcripts, Stern gives the reader a fuller picture of what actually happened. Because some meetings were not recorded, written summaries of those sessions provide crucial evidence. In addition, not all of the action was confined to the Oval Office or the Cabinet Room, where the taping systems were located.

This book, a condensed version of Stern's excellent 2003 work, Averting "The Final Failure": John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings, suffers little in the effort to make it more accessible to students and general readers. It offers easy access to the details of an important confrontation. And in one way, the condensation may actually enhance understanding. In his 2003 book, Stern cited repeated errors in the 1997 transcription of the tapes, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In this book, he seems more willing to let his painstaking work stand on its own two feet. Nevertheless, the condensation has resulted in the loss of valuable bits of context. For example, the following quotation appears with no attribution whatsoever: "It is hard to imagine the fear and passion that once surrounded the very word 'Berlin.'" The reader is bound to wonder whether the speaker was Kennedy, or one of his aides, or someone else. To find out, the reader must flip to the back of the book and go through the notes. Another paragraph cites a prominent historian repeatedly, again without giving the reader a clue as to his identity in the text; this is perhaps acceptable with footnotes but problematic when using endnotes. But these are quibbles in what overall is an excellent book.