Above and Beyond: John F. Kennedy and America's Most Dangerous Cold War Spy Mission

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the hottest confrontation of the Cold War, bringing the United States and Soviet Union to a near nuclear war. U-2 planes, which flew at a ten-mile altitude, were the only aircraft that could provide President John F. Kennedy with the intelligence and surveillance photographs to challenge Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev's assertion that only defensive missiles were housed in Cuba. Sherman and Tougias (coauthors, The Finest Hours) present an absorbing account of heroic U-2 pilots Rudolph Anderson (1927–63) and Charles Maultsby (1926–98) and their harrowing missions. Steve Heyser, another pilot summed up U-2 training: "Your mind never relaxes. If it does, you're dead." Sadly, this proved prophetic, as Anderson, who flew over Cuba more than any other U-2 pilot, was shot down and killed by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. The most fascinating chapters describe Anderson and Maultsby's lives, training, and assignments, especially Maultsby's catastrophic flight over the Arctic Circle that drifted into Soviet Union air space.