The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory

"Marshals irrefutable evidence to succinctly demolish the mythic version of the crisis . . . sober analysis." —The Atlantic

This book exposes the misconceptions, half-truths, and outright lies that have shaped the still dominant but largely mythical version of what happened in the White House during those harrowing two weeks of secret Cuban missile crisis deliberations.


More than a half-century after the event, it is surely time to demonstrate, once and for all, that Robert F. Kennedy's Thirteen Days and the personal memoirs of other ExComm members cannot be taken seriously as historically accurate accounts of the ExComm meetings. This book, from the first historian to listen to and evaluate the White House tapes made during the crisis, does exactly that.


"Stern is not alone in questioning the precision of the transcripts offered, but he has made the most painstaking attempt to clarify what was really said and done." —Journal of American History