| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Alice L. George. Awaiting Armageddon: How Americans Faced the Cuban Missile Crisis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2003. Pp. xxiii, 238. $29.95.
Every historian must struggle with the basic problem of whether to organize historical materials chronologically or thematically. But surely, an event that lasts for only thirteen days—such as the Cuban missile crisis—calls for a chronological approach, and here we see the first problem with Alice L. George's book. George has chosen a thematic organization, and by doing so squanders the drama surrounding the discovery of the missiles, the buildup in tensions and the nerve-racking climax that makes the Cuban missile crisis such a compelling story. Thus, over and over again, in chapter after chapter, the missiles are discovered, the quarantine declared, the ships boarded, the U-2 spy plane shot down, and the missiles withdrawn. George wastes no time in dissipating whatever dramatic suspense that might lay ahead by summing up the whole Cuban missile crisis in ten and a half pages in a chapter that appears before the introduction. It is not that the summation of this story is dull or the writing poor. The story is gripping and the writing excellent, but the reader now gloomily understands that the rest of the book will by necessity be elaboration and repetition.	1
It is a shame that George imposed this form of organization on her materials because she is a gifted writer and an tireless researcher. She has mined government archives and reports, private papers, newspapers, magazines, as well as the secondary literature to give the reader an insider's view of developments. George also finds the telling anecdote. For instance, on the day the Soviets promised to defy the U.S. quarantine, visitors to the White House included "six employees of the Central Intelligence Agency, six military officers, and nineteen nursery school classmates of four-year-old Caroline Kennedy" (pp. xiv-xv). On the worst day of the crisis, President Kennedy "watched Roman Holiday, a film starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck that chronicled a European princess's attempts to enjoy a break from the weight of official duties" (p. xxi).	. . .

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