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Gribkov, Anatoli I., and William Y. Smith. Operation Anadyr. Chicago: Edition Q, 1994. 252pp. $24.95
This is the first work to combine the military perspectives of ranking Soviet and American officers who had firsthand knowledge of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis (or what the Soviets called the Caribbean Crisis). General Anatoli Gribkov and General William Smith met in 1992 at one of a series of conferences that brought both sides together to analyze the actions of the superpowers during that critical event, which nearly ended in nuclear war. Motivated by their experiences in Havana, the generals individually developed expanded accounts of their involvement, supported by recently declassified documents. The result is this book, which contains both generals' perceptions and related documents, in two appendices. General Gribkov served as a representative of the Soviet General Staff to oversee construction of the missile sites and provide situation reports to the Minister of Defense, Marshal Rodion Malinovsky. From him one learns that this project's codename (the Anadyr is a northeastern Russian river) was part of an intelligence...