by mk 467 days ago · link · parent · post: An Essay in Reflection to Cary Sherman's Op-Ed
Early in 1962, President Kennedy read Barbara Tuchman’s book The Guns of August, a startling account of the outbreak of World War 1. The President was so shocked by what he read that he required his Cabinet members and the National Security Council to read the book. He even gave a copy to England’s Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (Tuchman, vii). Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara recalled that the President explained how the book “graphically portrayed how Europe’s leaders had bungled into the debacle of World War 1. And he emphasized: ‘I don’t ever want to be in that position… we are not going to bungle into war.’”
http://dissentiscool.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/the-cuban-miss...
It's one of the best books, history or otherwise, that I've read.