Robert Kennedy describes the missile crisis as “a confrontation between the two giant atomic nations, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., which brought the world to the abyss of nuclear destruction and the end of mankind” (20). The threat of nuclear war looms throughout the book, from the discovery of the Russian missiles in Cuba until the crisis is resolved. President Kennedy understood that “once an attack began our adversaries could respond with a missile barrage from which many millions of Americans would be killed” (43). All the members of his advisory committee are acutely aware of the potential consequences of their proposals as “each one of us was being asked to make a recommendation which, if wrong and if accepted, could mean the destruction of the human race” (35).

They feel the weight of the enormous burden they carry for the future of the world, “the responsibility we had to people around the globe who had never heard of our country or the men sitting in that room determining their fate, making a decision which would influence whether they would live or die” (76). President Kennedy is particularly concerned about the fate of children and young people, and deeply troubled by “the specter of the death of the children of this country and all the world–the young people who had no role, who had no say, who knew nothing even of the confrontation, but whose lives would be snuffed out like everyone else’s” (81).