Thirteen Days: More than a Memoir

In 1961, no one in America was comfortable with a communist country existing 90 miles off the coast off Miami. The CIA in all their infinite wisdom devised a plan, and a naive John F. Kennedy agreed, against the wishes of the US military, to train a bunch of ex-patriots on how to invade an island. What we now know as the Bay of Pigs was a total disaster, made up of a series of bad decisions. And 1,300 or so cuban exiles died for it.

In 1962, Johnny and the Unites States government couldn't afford to make ANY bad decisions. Because in 1962, the cost was a nuclear holocaust.

Following a failure at the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro was all too eager to accept the Soviet Union's desire to arm the Western Hemisphere. And in no time, Cuba had giant missiles on its shores. Under the watchful eye of America, President Kennedy was faced with a grave decision. How does the USA respond. Though the US military sought to conduct air strikes, Kennedy made the first of many important decisions, he invited 15 advisors to share a table to debate the alternatives.

There are many great accounts of how President Kennedy handled the big decisions regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis, but few capture the moral implications better than little brother Robert in Thirteen Days.