Ep. 116: Nuclear Roulette and the Cuban Missile Crisis with Martin Sherwin

Talking Beats with Daniel Lelchuk

"As Kennedy said at the United Nations, there is a 'sword of Damocles hanging by a thread over humanity,' and we're still in that same position today and will remain in that position unless we figure out how to get rid of nuclear weapons."

This is a rebroadcast of Ep. 88, aired originally April 7th, 2021. Marty Sherwin died on October 6th, 2021.

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Pulitzer-prize winning historian Martin J. Sherwin is on the podcast, discussing his new book Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The book sheds new light and brings fresh insights into what was one of the most volatile, potentially catastrophic periods of time in history— a time when the fate of the world was at a precipice. Many of the questions one naturally has about this period are answered by Marty Sherwin in dramatic, detailed manner. How did it happen in the first place that the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, was storing nuclear arms in Cuba? What role, contrary to what he writes in his autobiography, did Bobby Kennedy play? Who were the real heroes here that caused the world to avoid all-out nuclear war, and how close did we really come? Perhaps, most importantly: what have we, what has the world learned? Are we any better off now than before? Marty Sherwin, the world's preeminent Cold War historian is here, and he explains our past, our future, and our tragic reliance on Nuclear Arms.

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Martin Jay Sherwin (1937-2021) was an author and historian specializing in the development of atomic weapons and nuclear policy. Along with Kai Bird, Sherwin co-wrote American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2006. Sherwin was born in Brooklyn and studied at Dartmouth College. After four years in the Naval Air Force, Sherwin began graduate studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, receiving a Ph.D. in history in 1971. His dissertation focused on the decision to drop the atomic bomb, and was revised and published in 1975 as A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance to much acclaim. In addition to A World Destroyed and American Prometheus, Sherwin has advised a number of documentaries and television series relating to the Manhattan Project, including The Day after Trinity: A History of Nuclear Strategy, Stalin’s Bomb Maker: Citizen Kurchatov, and War and Peace in the Nuclear Age.

Sherwin also had a long and distinguished teaching career. In 1988, Sherwin founded the Global Classroom Project, which joined students from the United States and Russia in conversations over issues such as the nuclear arms race. Sherwin was professor emeritus in history at Tufts University and a professor of history at George Mason University. His collection of more than two dozen interviews and oral histories with Oppenheimer’s colleagues and friends is available on the "Voices of the Manhattan Project" website.