The Edge of Armageddon

Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called the Cuban Missile crisis, "the most dangerous moment in human history." Bruce Allyn was five years old when it happened but in 1989 would organize and participate in a Moscow meeting with the key living members of the 1962 crisis: Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, the former U.S. Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, and Sergei Khrushchev, who had edited the secret memoirs of his father, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The United States was represented at the meeting by former U.S. Defense Secretary Bob McNamara, former National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy and former Kennedy Special Counsel Ted Sorensen. Fidel Castro sent his top Politburo member and a key Army General to the Moscow meeting and he then personally hosted the fascinating final dialogue in Havana.

Allyn brings to life through the participants' own words the critical lessons they learned when they stood on the brink of nuclear Armageddon in 1962...