The Cuban missile crisis : the struggle over policy / Roger Hilsman.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [155]-158) and index.

Ch. 1. The Soviet Decision -- Ch. 2. The Intelligence Story -- Ch. 3. The Intelligence Postmortem -- Ch. 4. The Initial American Reaction -- Ch. 5. The Question of Soviet Motives -- Ch. 6. The Policy Decisions -- Ch. 7. The Resolution -- Ch. 8. The Aftermath -- Ch. 9. The Significance.

The world has never been as close to nuclear war as it was in November 1962. In this book, Roger Hilsman, head of intelligence at the U.S. State Department at that time, details the struggles that President Kennedy and his advisers went through to understand why the Soviet Union had deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba, describes the debate over alternative policy choices to force the removal of the missiles, and determines how and why each particular course of action was eventually chosen.