‘Grabs from the get-go … the moments in which the world teetered on the brink of total annihilation … come alive as they would if this were the very best fiction … Hastings is a writer in the permanent prime of his time … ABYSS is up there with the best … packed full of mordant humour, perfectly pitched amid the lunacy of mankind facing imminent destruction’
Mail on Sunday
‘Brilliantly told … compelling … Hastings has cleverly woven the story together from all sides … describing them in dramatic, almost hour by hour detail … this is a scary book. Hastings sees little evidence that today’s leaders understand each other any better than they did in 1962’
Sunday Times
‘Hastings’ magisterial new book reads like a thriller played out in real-time in Washington, Moscow and Havana…Parallels between the historical confrontation that brought the world so close to nuclear war and current events are chilling.’
Daily Express
‘Hastings lays bare, with chilling clarity, the ease with which political theatre and bluster could well have escalated into a scenario of mutually assured destruction … ABYSS provides chastening lessons on how easily things can spiral out of control but also how catastrophe can be averted’
Observer
‘Superb … reads like a thriller as the gripping drama of the Cold War power politics plays out behind closed doors in Washington, Moscow and Havana’
Daily Mail
‘Hastings has combined his investigative skills with his flair for storytelling to produce the most gripping narrative of the crisis … a frightening but hopelessly addictive narrative of 13 nerve-wracking days when the world teetered above an abyss’
The Times
‘The heart-stopping story of the missile crisis … with the narrative verve and panache that is Hastings’s hallmark … a brilliant, beautifully constructed and thrilling re-assessment of the most perilous moment in history’
Sunday Telegraph
‘A gripping retelling of those weeks of brinkmanship, reckless gambles, gung-ho generals and a thuggish USSR leader bullying a ‘weak president’’
The Sun
