I picked this up because I needed hope, or maybe just to go back to a time when good men and their counterparts could reason their way to a peaceable settlement, short of war. Today too many blabbermouths are in control with no inkling of the cost of their decisions on human lives, where life itself doesn't matter. 'I like nuclear war, ' a certain somebody says ever so casually. My generation studied nuclear war and its consequences. It's a thing to be avoided, not embraced.

I powered through this book in three days. Told through the eyes of JFK 's younger brother, it's a straightforward account, spare in extraneous detail but spot on in regards to the seriousness with which his cabinet took this for two harrowing weeks, how JFK agonized over decisions that may very well have saved the world. Would that we had sensible leadership today.