At the time of the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962 the British Ambassador in Washington was David Ormsby-Gore. He did not determine events but he was an important influencer.
For thirteen days in 1962 President Kennedy chaired a committee convened to decide what the United States should do about Russia’s (secret) deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba.
Why read a book (more than 500 pages) when you know how it ends? This occurred to me as I started Abyss, The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 by (Sir) Max Hastings.