1983

Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink

By: Taylor Downing

Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe

Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

A riveting, real-life thriller about 1983 - the year tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union nearly brought the world to the point of nuclear Armageddon

The year 1983 was an extremely dangerous one - more dangerous than 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the United States, President Reagan vastly increased defense spending, described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," and launched the "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative to shield the country from incoming missiles. Seeing all this, Yuri Andropov, the paranoid Soviet leader, became convinced that the US really meant to attack the Soviet Union and he put the KGB on high alert, looking for signs of an imminent nuclear attack.

When a Soviet plane shot down a Korean civilian jet, Reagan described it as "a crime against humanity." And Moscow grew increasingly concerned about America's language and behavior. Would they attack? The temperature rose fast. In November the West launched a wargame exercise, codenamed "Abel Archer," that looked to the Soviets like the real thing. With Andropov's finger inching ever closer to the nuclear button, the world was truly on the brink.

This is an extraordinary and largely unknown Cold War story of spies and double agents, of missiles being readied, intelligence failures, misunderstandings, and the panic of world leaders. With access to hundreds of astonishing new documents, Taylor Downing tells for the first time the gripping but true story of how near the world came to nuclear war in 1983.

©2018 Taylor Downing (P)2018 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"A gripping and frankly terrifying book on the US-Soviet nuclear confrontation" (Tom Holland, award-winning author of Rubicon and Dynasty)

Great book, but annoyingly bad voice impersonation

The writing and research are great. The narration, not so much. The reader's "normal" voice and accent are just fine, for the most part (except that Menachem Begin's last name is not pronounced like "begin"). While it's normal for an audiobook voicer to speak a bit differently when reading a direct quotation, this one reads them all in the worst American accent I've ever heard. Not only does he overdo the subtle breathiness in Reagan's voice, but never bothered to notice that he did NOT pronounce "Soviet" like "SAH-vee-et." (It's just not a very common American pronunciation, yet in this book, all the Americans say it that way, even though the author pronounces it correctly when he's not reading a quote.) Given the number of quotes in the book, the bad American accents--and Reagan's especially--are not just annoying but persistently annoying. On the bright side, I can more readily sympathize with Brits who encounter Americans who think that all Brits speak with a poorly executed Cockney accent. The writing is solid enough to make up for that annoyance, but it does lessen an otherwise great audobook. As someone who was a teen in 83, I had forgotten how much happened that year--and, of course, a lot more happened than we realized at the time. The author goes a great job of weaving together all of the things that brought us so close to the brink. That year was probably every bit as dangerous to the human species as the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but many people don't know the story of 1983 nearly as well as the story of 1962, This book helps to rectify that. It's just a shame that the audiobook reader decided to do bad Reagan impressions instead of just reading the text.

One of the worst narrators ever

Title says it all.

Why does this guy think he can imitate and American accent? Why did the producer or engineer let him keep using his horrible American accent. How does this guy not know he got hired because he has a nice British accent?

This otherwise interesting book is a chore to listen to because of the narrator. It’s one of the worst I’ve heard.

1983 - Could be the most dangerous year

Incredibly fascinating book, History always seems to be something our parents and grandparents lived through. Turns out besides living through 1968 as the summer of love we live through 19 8 3 the closest we ever came to Armageddon

Great look at an important period of the Cold War

This was a great look at an important period of the Cold War. It was well researched and gave good background. It wasn’t super enlightening from a details prospective, but a nice mid level look. But the narrator was British and was fine except when he tried to do an American accent, which just turned out to be very condescending. If he would have simply narrated and not tried to be an impressionist it would have been far better. Otherwise I enjoyed this book.

Interesting book... Distracting Narration

While along the lines of 'Deadhand', '1983' is a good read... however, as has been mentioned before, the narration - especially the bad American accent - is a distraction and, for me, made it tough to get through. I did enjoy the book, though.

Close call in the cold war

Amazing story, well researched and well told. I didn't know a lot more than I realized.

MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction

Great book. I was serving in 1983 and for many years thought 1983 was a close second to the Cuban Missile Crisis. After listening to this book, yes, we were closer to MAD than during the Cuban missile crisis.

Great story, poor narration choices.

This is a wonderfully written, tense, gripping and actually very timely story. During Reagan’s presidency, many people, myself included, mocked his hyperbole about the Russians and the threat they posed to the US and the world. From today’s perspective, he seems pretty prescient. The only problem I had with this book, was the very unfortunate choice to have the English narrator attempt to imitate Reagan and other American voices, which made everybody sound like Albert Finney, if he were from Boston, and if he were a teamster. This often took me out of the story because of how ridiculous these supposedly American voices sounded. For example, for some reason the narrator believes that Americans pronounce the word "soviet" as "Saahveeyet." A minor annoyance at first; but this drove me up the wall after hearing it dozens of times. Other than that an important book , worth listening to.

Worth any narration problems

I was almost scared off the book by the complaints about the performance of the narrator. Glad I wasn’t. I could understand the words when they were pronounced oddly or incorrectly. The book is fascinating. A lot of information I never knew. The info about the spies was worth the price of admission.

World on the brink was riveting

Very well written book. History does repeat itself. Well researched and author conveys the timeline in an easy to follow narrative. The reader’s continued attempt to read quotes of senior US officials in an American accent was very distracting. Other times he was pleasant to listen to, so it would have been much better if he just read the text in his normal voice.