From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1969 book by Robert F. Kennedy
Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis
is
Robert F. Kennedy
's account of the
Cuban Missile Crisis
of 1962. The book was released in 1969, the year after
his assassination
.
[1]
Thirteen Days
describes the meetings held by the Executive Committee (
ExComm
), the team assembled by US President
John F. Kennedy
to handle the tense situation that developed between the United States and the
Soviet Union
following the discovery of Soviet
nuclear missiles
in
Cuba
, 90 miles (140 km) from
Florida
. Robert Kennedy, who was the
US Attorney General
at the time, describes his brother John's leadership style during the crisis as involved, but not controlling. Robert Kennedy viewed the military leaders on the council sympathetically, and recognized that their lifelong concentration on war was difficult to set aside.
The book was used as the basis for the 1974 television play
The Missiles of October
. In 2000, the theatrical film
Thirteen Days
was produced using the same title, but based on an entirely different book,
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis
by
Ernest R. May
and
Philip D. Zelikow
. That book contained some information that Kennedy was not able to reveal because it was classified at the time.
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
Haruya Anami, "'Thirteen Days' Thirty Years After: Robert Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited,"
Journal of American & Canadian Studies
(1994) Issue 12, pp 69-88.