Many of my companions were openly crying and beginning to despair. Afterwards I soberly rode the elevator up to my room from the dorm lounge where so many girls had watched and listened to grave and frightening announcements. I was in college at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and vividly remember the sense of urgency I felt after President Kennedy’s now-famous speech where everything-my future and that of the entire world-was on the line. Contemporary readers may find their behavior implausible, but having grown up in the post WW II era, I see this as congruent with the values and character of that period. They clung to, or discovered, what meant most to them in their lives and continued to carry on in the face of the certain destruction of the human species. What struck me most from this most recent experience with the novel is the complete decency and sense of duty its characters displayed as they waited for a deadly inevitable cloud of radiation from nuclear war in the Northern Hemisphere to reach them in southern Australia. Now, after a lifetime, I listened to the audiobook. I first read it while in high school and then again some time later. This book profoundly influenced much of my life.
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