The Crisis Years by Michael R. Beschloss

Beschloss's The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960–1963 (New York: Edward Burlingame Books, 1991).

The book's shortcomings are illuminated by setting it against the analysis in a volume on which Dallek frequently draws: Michael R. One might have hoped that in addition to being instructive on Kennedy himself, Dallek's book would be a useful history of Soviet-American relations during the Kennedy presidency. Dallek is closely attentive to Kennedy's sexual promiscuity, the truly parlous state of his health, and his heavy reliance on medications, but he argues that they did not impair the president's performance in office. Dallek portrays a JFK who was clear-headed, undogmatic, and intent on preventing the Cold War from turning hot. Reeves's A Question of Character: A Life of John F.

Patterson's edited collection Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961–1963 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), nor the violence-prone devotee of machismo to be found in writings such as Thomas C. The Kennedy who emerges from Robert Dallek's biography is of interest to students of the Cold War in that he proves to have been neither the anti-Communist ideologue depicted in such works as Thomas G. The buck stopped with Kennedy, who opted for the less draconian alternative and, unbeknownst to many of his advisers, secretly assured Moscow that his administration would accede to its demand to withdraw U.S. Kennedy's advisers were sharply divided about whether to give Soviet leaders the option of withdrawing the missiles they had secretly installed in Cuba or to launch an air strike on the missile sites, a course of action that might well have triggered a nuclear war. His finger was on the American nuclear button during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, a confrontation that could have destroyed hundreds of millions of lives and could have eroded the habitability of most of the planet. Kennedy would stand high on any ranking of political leaders whose personal qualities helped shape the Cold War.

The Crisis Years by Michael R. Beschloss