Dark Beyond Darkness: The Cuban Missile Crisis as History, Warning, and Catalyst

Blight and Lang (The Armageddon Letters), married scholars at the University of Waterloo, use the Cuban missile crisis as a case study in developing a long argument against nuclear weapons. The authors, decades-long advocates of nuclear disarmament, advance their premise here by presenting the U.S.-Soviet crisis over missiles in Cuba from the perspective of the Cuban government. They argue that the Cuban leadership’s role in the crisis has been underappreciated and that Cuban leadership was very willing to sacrifice Cuba to provoke a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. It is an interesting thesis, but the academic underpinning as presented in this work is weak. The book is not a history of the crisis, so readers don’t get a complete understanding of all the complex dimensions of the event. Furthermore, the authors’ focus on Cuba and Cuban sources, and their dubious close collaboration with Robert McNamara (who was U.S. Secretary of Defense during the crisis and to whom the book is dedicated), may trouble some readers. Still, this book will be of interest to those drawn to the anti-nuclear movement and those looking for an uncommon viewpoint on the event. (Dec.)