Serhii Plokhy's Nuclear Folly, a history of the lead-up to, events of, and fallout from the Cuban Missile Crisis is a compellingly written portrait of US-USSR relations in the early 1960s. For readers unfamiliar with the event, this book provides a thorough overview of both what happened and, more interestingly, why it happened. And for history buffs who have read older material, Plokhy brings in a hefty amount of newly available/recently declassified Soviet accounts to the story.

If you're looking for either a general history of the crisis or are curious to read an English-language work that deals as much with the Russian/Soviet and Cuban framing as it does the US-American one, this is a top notch choice.

Nuclear Folly is Serhii Plokhy’s reexamination of the Cuban Missile Crisis on the grounds that many nations are leaving previously established nuclear weapons protocols and making noises about acquiring or using nuclear weapons as though such threats are just another tool of foreign policy. We need to remember just how volatile the Cuban Missile Crisis was and just how close so many of us came to not even being on the planet. Fear was a big motivator in how the crisis got amped up to such a dangerous place as neither side really had an accurate read on the other sides intentions or perspective.

What’s special about Nuclear Folly as opposed to other accounts is that Plokhy is able to bring in the American side, the Soviet Side, and the Cuban side. This gives the reader a fuller picture as opposed to just looking at the American perspective. Much of the Soviet/Cuban stuff is brand new to me. The reader learns of the concerns within the Soviet decision-making apparatus about putting missiles in Cuba or Castro’s feelings of being double-crossed by his Soviet “allies” in the aftermath.

I think that Nuclear Folly gives the reader a far more nuanced and complete picture of what happened. It’s also a fairly easy read as it reads more like a thriller than an academic history, which is great because people really need to understand why we cannot be so cavalier about the use of nuclear weapons. Hopefully Nuclear Folly can serve as that reminder.

If you haven't read Plokhy's book on Chernobyl, start there. It's a great work and it's what brought me to this book. However, this book is closely behind it. The Cuban Missile Crisis gets a reputation as political jockeying in order to avoid nuclear war, but the book makes it much more than that. It is a book about power politics, exploring the motivations of the Soviet Union and putting it squarely in context of the larger Cold War, specifically with the developments in central Europe.

The greatest benefit this book brings is a narrative that combines both US and USSR points of view. So many books focus on only the American view, that it removes all of the drama and discussion that went on in Russia. (Granted, those sources are probably only becoming now available). However, this provides a really full, detailed account of the before, during, and after, of the events.

It's much more objective than a lot of other works. Let's be honest: don't judge the Cuban Missile Crisis on Thirteen Days; it's a good read, but its bias should be clear. Plokhy's bias as a historian of European history serves him well here. There is not much American foreign policy history that only requires the American viewpoint, and he does a nice job trying to simultaneously look at both sides and how they reacted.

A word on readability, as well: Plokhy is a great writer. This not dry analytical writing, it reads as narration to a gripping documentary. It will keep your attention until you hit the endnotes (and if you're very interested, maybe even past that point)