num_pages: 721
description: The definitive book on the U-2 episode and its disastrous impact on the future of the Cold War ( Kirkus Reviews ).On May Day 1960 Soviet forces downed a CIA spy plane flown deep into Soviet territory by Francis Gary Powers two weeks before a crucial summit. This forced President Dwight Eisenhower to decide whether in an effort to save the meeting to admit to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchevand the worldthat he had secretly ordered Powerss flight or to claim that the CIA could take such a significant step without his approval. In rich and fascinating detail Mayday explores the years of U-2 flights which Eisenhower deemed an act of war the US governments misconceived attempt to cover up the true purpose of the flight Khrushchevs dramatic revelation that Powers was alive and in Soviet custody and the show trial that sentenced the pilot to prison and hard labor. From a U-2s cramped cockpit to tense meetings in the Oval Office the Kremlin Camp David CIA headquarters the lyse Palace and Number Ten Downing Street historian Michael Beschloss draws on previously unavailable CIA documents diaries and letters as well as the recollections of Eisenhowers aides to reveal the full high-stakes drama and bring to life its key figures which also include Richard Nixon Allen Dulles and Charles de Gaulle. An impressive work of scholarship with the dramatic pacing a spy thriller Mayday may be one of the best stories yet written about just how those grand men of diplomacy and intrigue conducted our business ( Time ). 
language: English
title: Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair
publisher: Open Road Media