"This book is based on the exhibition "To the Brink: JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis," presented in the Lawrence F. O'Brien Gallery at the National Archives Building, Washington, DC, from October 12, ...

A U.S. Air Force surveillance flight over Cuba in October 1962 turned up evidence of what U.S. officials had feared: the Soviet Union was installing nuclear-armed missiles on the island. The discovery ...

Jacqueline Kennedy eavesdropped through a White House door during the crisis. Sept. 13, 2011— -- President Kennedy, a student of history and President Lincoln, joked darkly after his triumph in ...

In today’s highly charged political environment, in which a president’s handling of international crises, however competent or inept, is immediately subject to hyperbole and sanctification by ...

The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 was the moment that the United States and the Soviet Union came closest to nuclear war. The conventional wisdom is that decision-making occurred “with ...

A map prepared by the Defense Department in 1962 shows potential ranges of Soviet ballistic missiles from Cuba. Department of Defense Cuban Missile Crisis briefing materials/John F. Kennedy ...

Tomorrow will mark the thirteenth day of what future historians might well dub the “Iranian nuclear missile crisis.” Set off by the overwhelming Israeli air campaign against Iran begun on June 13, the ...

The United States has been close to war a number of times, but 63 years ago was the closest this country has ever gotten to nuclear war. President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation in a national ...

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Renata Keller is an associate professor of history at the ...

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Renata Keller, University of Nevada, Reno (THE CONVERSATION) Sixty-three years ago, ...