In the last two weeks of October 1962, the world came closer to nuclear warfare than it ever has. For 14 tense days, United States President John F Kennedy and Soviet Premiere Nikita Kruschev stood eyeball to eyeball, each with his hand on the nuclear trigger. In the end, both sides blinked. This volume is a collection of declassified documents from American and Soviet archives, detailing the history of those two weeks. Preface gives an overview and timeline of the crisis.