Description
First edition of Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis, signed by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Octavo, 224pp. Blue cloth, title printed in gilt on spine, embossed initials of RFK on front cover. First edition statement on copyright page with full number line. In publisher’s dust jacket, $5.50 on front flap, some loss along top edge, chip to bottom edge on back panel, bright colors, overall very good. Signed by former Secretary of Defense and a critical player in the “Thirteen Days” of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert McNamara. Inscribed a month after publication, “To John, with my admiration and best wishes, Bob McNamara. 3/18/69.”
Comments: Robert McNamara was serving as the Secretary of Defense during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. McNamara and President Kennedy agreed that a military confrontation with the Soviet Union could be suicidal, so they both explored alternatives. He wrote on the topic of nuclear proliferation and his experience in the Cuban Missile Crisis in Blundering Into Disaster: Surviving the First Century of the Nuclear Age (1986).
