One Minute to Midnight

One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs, Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. 

Cuban Missile Crisis

Soon after Fidel Castro became dictator of Cuba in 1959, he turned to the Soviet Union for financial and military hep. In particular, the Soviets installed missiles with nuclear warheads in Cuba in 1962. American U-2 spy planes discovered this fact. This book has a tremendous amount of detail about what happened in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

The Soviet-installed Weapons

• medium range ballistic missiles, such as the R-12

• intermediate range ballistic missile such as the Soviet R-14 with a 2800 mile range

• cruise missiles with nuclear warheads

• Lunas, tactical rocket with nuclear warheads

• Ilyushin IL-298 bombers

• MiG-21 fighter jets

Naval Blockade

The United States responded to this threat with a naval blockade around Cuba to stop the flow of Soviet arms.