Thirteen Days (book)

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See also: Thirteen Days (film)

Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis is Robert F. Kennedy's account of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The book was released in 1969, a year after his assassination.

Thirteen Days describes the meetings held by the Executive Committee (ExComm), the team assembled by US President John F. Kennedy to handle the tense situation that developed between the US and the USSR following the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from Florida. Robert Kennedy, who was the US Attorney General at the time, describes his brother John's leadership style during the crisis as involved, but not controlling. He explains, for example, that the president would often withhold his views in meetings, knowing that others would tend to parrot his ideas rather than offer honest appraisals. Robert Kennedy viewed the military leaders on the council sympathetically, and recognized that their lifelong concentration on war was difficult to set aside.