president’s shift away from the air strike option during the next fortyeight hours suggests that Adlai’s strong and early advocacy of “explor[ing] the possibilities of a peaceful solution” provided Kennedy with a blueprint to do exactly that. In fact, Stevenson’s suggestions of October 16 and 17 were congruent with nearly all the steps that the president followed in resolving the crisis.

Martin J. Sherwin, Gambling with armageddon: Nuclear roulette from hiroshima to the cuban missile crisis, 1945-1962, New York, 2020, p. 251