This book fills the gap between the longer, more detailed texts on the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the popular histories, most notably Robert F. Kennedy's Thirteen Days (and the 2000 TV movie of the same title). Munton and Welch have written a short, readable text that stresses the big picture, answers the important questions and corrects the historical inaccuracies of Thirteen Days. The authors make use of newly available sources from US and Russian archives to present Soviet and Cuban perspectives in the crisis, which have in the past been unavailable or downplayed.