One Minute To Midnight

[Dobbs] has made extensive use of untapped archive material to reveal the secrets of the cloak-and-dagger operations behind the nuclear stand-off in the Caribbean... Excellent

John Crossland, Daily Mail

A book with sobering new information . . . as well as contemporary relevance . . . filled with insights that will change the views of experts

Richard Holbrooke, former US ambassador to the UN, New York Times Book Review

A book with sobering new information about the world's only superpower nuclear confrontation - as well as contemporary relevance . . . Filled with insights that will change the views of experts and help inform a new generation

Richard Holbrooke, The New York Times Book Review

A relentless and determined researcher, Dobbs visited half a dozen countries including Russia and Cuba, over a two year period in his search for the full truth about the October missile crisis... This author seeks to humanise the story and bring it down to the level of the individual pilot or soldier

Irish Times

An important work of scholarship . . . Dobbs [is] an experienced investigative journalist, a talented writer and an intelligent historical analyst

Martin Sherman, co-author of American Prometheus

Dobb's hour-by-hour overview is a worthy study of this much mythologised fortnight . . . Dobb's chronological approach not only provides a natural sense of pace, but also allows him to illustrate the near-fatal time lag in communication between the two sides

Time Out

Dobbs is a master at telling stories as they unfold and from a variety of perspectives... In a densely packed, fast-paced narrative, Dobbs presents the crisis from its early stages through the decision to blockade Cuba and Kennedy's ordering of DEFCON 2, the last step before an attack, to the final resolution

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Dobbs writes it up like a thriller

Billy Heller, New York Post

Dobbs writes it up like a thriller

Billy Heller, New York Post

Extraordinary . . . As gripping as any fiction. Dobbs is an impeccable researcher and reporter

The Christian Science Monitor

Filled with memorable characters in extraordinary circumstances and exotic settings . . . evokes novelists like Alan Furst, John le Carré or Graham Greene

Washington Post Book World

Gripping . . . A significant contribution to our understanding of that perilous autumn

Bloomberg News

In this compelling - and thrilling - new study by Michael Dobbs, there is much new material that forces us to revise our assumptions about the crisis... This is the first book about the crisis to tell the story of the tactical cruise missiles and the first to contain interviews with Soviet veterans. Dobbs adopts a cinematic style, cross-cutting between locations and time zones, and perfectly judges the acceleration of pace in the second half of the book which concentrates on Black Sunday. Unlike previous writers, Dobbs gives due prominence to the subplots, any one of which might have sparked mass destruction

Christopher Silvester, Daily Express

Mesmerising stuff ... a riveting hour-by-hour account of one day that could have changed the history of humanity

Joanna Bourke, The Times

Riveting and highly informative, One Minute to Midnight portrays the intense human drama of mankind on the brink of an unthinkable war

The Philadelphia Inquirer