The Shadow of War

March 25, 2024
Shaara (The Old Lion) dramatizes the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in his lackluster latest. The story draws on the perspectives of various members of the Kennedy administration; Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and his advisers; and fictional English professor Joseph Russo, a Kennedy supporter living in a pro-Nixon Florida community. As the Kennedy White House grapples with the complex fallout of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, an emboldened Khrushchev begins shipping nuclear weapons to Cuba. Attorney general Robert Kennedy, under the direction of his brother in chief, scrambles to come up with a path forward that won’t lead to mutually assured destruction, and the cabinet weighs a land invasion, a naval blockade, and diplomacy. These Oval Office scenes alternate with ones featuring Khrushchev, who considers potential countermoves and deals with the hardliners in his party who push for a strong response to the U.S. blockade. Meanwhile, the Russo family learns of the threat through television broadcasts and duck-and-cover drills at school. Exposition-heavy dialogue lessens the suspense, and too little attention is paid to the Russos. This pales in comparison to other fictional treatments of earthshaking geopolitical events, such as Robert Harris’s Munich.

April 1, 2024
Armageddon looms in this barely fictionalized retelling of the Cuban missile crisis. In 1962, an American U-2 spy plane returns with photos of missiles the Soviets are installing in Fidel Castro's Cuba. The Cold War is already tense, and now U.S. enemies will be able to strike anywhere in the country right from its own backyard. Of course, the Kennedy administration cannot--will not--let this threat stand. Some American generals want to invade Cuba or at least strike the missile sites, which is guaranteed to kill Russians. Others want to blockade all Russian ships headed there and sink the ones that won't stop--show the world who's boss. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev must deal with hotheads of his own who are eager to fight and destroy the U.S. Meanwhile, Castro talks like he's all in for a fight, and he's angry that he has no control over the missiles. The author portrays the viewpoints of Robert Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev as key players who understand the nuclear abyss they and their families may face. English professor Joseph Russo represents the millions of Americans who are simply scared by the nightly news and are worried that they should have built that family fallout shelter after all. Everyone knows how the story ends, so this well-researched book holds no great surprises. By and large, the main players are rational human beings--when a missile brings down a U-2 and kills American pilot Major Rudolph Anderson, men like R.F.K. urgently work to prevent escalation into all-out war. But Russo's neighbor says nukes are fine: "All we needed was one good-sized hydrogen bomb, and Cuba would have been a sandbar." Russo's children tell him of the "duck and cover" exercises their school principal makes them do. Pupils hiding under desks and neighbors stocking up their fallout shelters strike Russo as foolishness, but along with the dire nightly news, he wonders if President Kennedy can ward off a nuclear holocaust. Spoiler alert: He does, with the help of rational leaders on both sides. As with other Shaara works like To Wake the Giant (2020) and The Old Lion (2023), this is solid history with enough invented dialogue to justify calling it a novel. A gripping story of foes stepping away from the brink of annihilation.

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May 15, 2024
Shaara's The Old Lion (2023) dramatized the life of former U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt. In his new book, Shaara takes the same approach with an especially dicey moment in American history: the Cuban Missile Crisis. The book features well-known historical figures--John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev being, inevitably, the central players--and events that have been written about numerous times. Yet, and this may be his greatest gift as a historical novelist, the author makes the story feel fresh, immediate, and even suspenseful. Even though we know how the crisis ended, we are, while we're submerged in the story, biting our nails, waiting to find out if the world will be plunged into a global war. It is a remarkable literary performance, and the novel does what some history texts on the same subject do not: it makes us feel as though we are living through the Cuban Missile Crisis.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.