In October 1962, the fate of the world hung on the American response to the discovery of Soviet nuclear missile sites in Cuba. That response was informed by hours of discussions between John F. Kennedy and his top advisers. What those advisers did not know was that President Kennedy was secretly taping their talks, providing future scholars with a rare inside look at high-level political deliberation in a moment of crisis. Talk at the Brink is the first book to examine these historic audio recordings from a sociological perspective. It reveals how conversational practices and dynamics shaped Kennedy's perception of the options available to him, thereby influencing his decisions and ultimately the outcome of the crisis. David Gibson looks not just at the positions taken by Kennedy and his advisers but how those positions were articulated, challenged, revised, and sometimes ignored. He argues that Kennedy's decisions arose from the intersection of distant events unfolding in Cuba, Moscow, and the high seas with the immediate conversational minutia of turn-taking, storytelling, argument, and justification. In particular, Gibson shows how Kennedy's group told and retold particular stories again and again, sometimes settling upon a course of action only after the most frightening consequences were omitted or actively suppressed. Talk at the Brink presents an image of Kennedy's response to the Cuban missile crisis that is sharply at odds with previous scholarship, and has important implications for our understanding of decision making, deliberation, social interaction, and historical contingency.

About the Author
David R. Gibson is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Reviews
Winner of the 2013 Melvin Pollner Prize, Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis Section of the American Sociological Association "[W]ith his thorough and incisive analysis of the ExComm meetings, David Gibson has provided a new, refreshing, and disturbing look at how US decision-makers responded to the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba."--Asa McKercher, Dzplomacy & Statecraft "For its empirical contribution alone, Talk at the Brink is required reading for scholars of Cold War history and American politics. The writing is witty and uncluttered, while the raw intimacy of the back-and-forth among ExComm members, as rendered by the painstakingly precise transcription and coding, makes for a rather riveting and eminently teachable experience."--Phaedra Daipha, American Journal of Sociology "Gibson's Talk at the Brink is a stimulating and insightful contribution to scholarship on one of the single most important events in American history of the past sixty years--the Cuban Missile Crisis... The book is well worth a read, and a place on your bookshelf."--Erik Schneiderhan, Oxford University Press



Book Information
ISBN 9780691151311
Author David R. Gibson
Format Hardback
Page Count 256
Imprint Princeton University Press
Publisher Princeton University Press
Weight(grams) 454g