i would guess any good book about the cuban missile crisis would work, but i've no idea what they are. i imagine it's not actually easy to find a decent book about it.

chomsky has talked about one incident:

Title: Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance

https://books.google.com/books?id=Xx3ptbzQ8L4C&newbks=0&prin...

“The missile crisis "was the most dangerous moment in human history," Arthur Schlesinger commented in October 2002 at a conference in Havana on the fortieth anniversary of the crisis, attended by a number of those who witnessed it from within as it unfolded. Decision-makers at the time undoubtedly understood that the fate of the world was in their hands. Nevertheless, attendees at the conference may have been shocked by some of the revelations. They were informed that in October 1962 the world was "one word away" from nuclear war. "A guy named Arkhipov saved the world," said Thomas Blanton of the National Security Archive in Washington, which helped organize the event. He was referring to Vasil Arkhipov, a Soviet submarine officer who blocked an order to fire nuclear-armed toredoes in October 27, at the tensest moment of the crisis, when the submarines were under attack by US destroyers. A devastating response would have been a near certainty, leading to a major war.”

quote (mis-quoted extensively, it seems) copied and fixed somewhat from here:

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8201462-the-missile-crisis-...

there was another russian soldier during another incident, Stanislav Petrov - think this was 80s, not sure.

i think to find any at-least-semi-prominent Americans who will talk honestly about nuclear war risk wrt russia/ukraine, it's just a very limited list -- as might be expected:

- chomsky
- medea benjamin (she has a book out on ukraine, apparently)
- ian bremmer might say something semi-realistic occasionally
- andrew bacevich (quincy)
- anatol lieven (quincy) (referred to by chomsky many times) https://www.democracynow.org/appearances/anatol_lieven
- john mearsheimer (quincy)
- jeffrey sachs (of china-lab-created-covid19 fame)
- vijay prashad

for this list, i can only really only endorse what i've heard chomsky say. i haven't heard much of medea on ukraine but i trust should would say the correct things. the rest... eh.

the quincy folks mostly start from the pov of USA-ALWAYS-AT-LEAST-INTENDS-TO-BE-BENEVOLENT, which i guess is the starting point for still being able to pull a paycheck of some kind while doing that kind of pr work.

the anatol dude does seem interesting, and he's cool to listen to - like he might actually know what he's talking about occasionally - but i lost respect for him when i heard him say a few months ago, basically, well now that 'x' has happened (russia invaded ukraine or i don't know), then it's all over and we just have to give up - we might as well just go ahead blow up the world now.

ok.

if you're a teenager or internet keyboard commando -- fine -- but not if you want to be taken seriously as some of foreign policy analyst or expert. but he has also said things that make sense like, 'well, all wars end in negotiated settlements, so.... why not do now what we're going to do later anyways?' -- which, good point!

democracy now has clips of these folks and more:

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ademocracynow.org+ukra...