Fall for the Book presents Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Martin J. Sherwin recontextualizes the Cuban Missile Crisis into the greater scope of the Cold War in Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Balancing the play-by-play of the Crisis with discussion of the history of nuclear warfare in a post-World War II world, Sherwin explores one of the most critical faceoffs in our nation’s history. Historian Thomas Lenord calls it “A thrilling read . . . This book takes us as close as we will ever get to the people whose judgments or insights determined the fate of 200 million people in a nuclear war.” Sherwin is one of America’s leading writers on nuclear history. His other books include A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies and American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer. Sponsored by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.