A01=David R. Gibson
Adviser
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American Sociological Association
Author_David R. Gibson
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Blockade
Bucharest
Calculation
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBTW
Category=JPSF
Category=NHTW
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Clause
Conflict avoidance
Consideration
Conversation analysis
COP=United States
Counterfactual history
Cuban Missile Crisis
Dean Acheson
Dean Rusk
Decision-making
Declaration of war
Deliberation
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
Demobilization
Director of Central Intelligence
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Discourse marker
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eq_society-politics
Essence of Decision
EXCOMM
Explanation
Foreign policy
Groupthink
Inception
Intonation (linguistics)
John F. Kennedy
Language_English
Linguistics
Lyndon B. Johnson
McCone
McGeorge Bundy
MP3
Narration
Narrative
Nikita Khrushchev
Notation
Obstacle
Orthography
PA=Available
Paul Nitze
Prediction
Prerogative
Presidium
Pretext
Price_€20 to €50
Princeton University Press
Probability
Pronoun
Pronunciation
PS=Active
Randall Collins
Readability
Requirement
Result
Robert McNamara
Sociology
softlaunch
Soviet Union
Storytelling
Suggestion
Thought
Transcriber
Turn-taking
U Thant
Uncertainty
United States Ambassador to Russia
United States Department of State
Utterance
Vested interest (communication theory)
War
West Berlin
Product details
- ISBN 9780691151311
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 29 Jul 2012
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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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.
David R. Gibson is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.
