The shattered crystal ball : fear and learning in the Cuban missile crisis /

A superb book. One is tempted to recommend this elegantly written, intense book for all users. Blight (Harvard University) marries the disciplines of psychology, literature, and political science into what is perhaps the most intriguing study of the Cuban missile crisis yet to appear. Blight's major argument--that fear played an instrumental role in the eventual outcome of that crisis--is a central thesis. More than that, however, the book is an attempt to go inside the minds of Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the other participants in that game of near-death. Using the tools of his discipline (psychology) Blight tracks the mind-sets of the decision-makers through the crisis, concentrating on the adaptive role that fear played in their decisions, especially during the fateful last 48 hous of the crisis. In the course of his analysis Blight takes issue with both the rational and irrational actor schools of analysis, arguing that neither approach is particularly useful in explaining what happened during those fateful days in 1962, nor will these schools be particularly useful in dealing with future world crises. The argument is provocative, the writing superb, and the lesson important. Upper-division undergraduates and above. -E. A. Duff, Randolph-Macon Woman's College