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.

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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.

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.

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.

American Accent Sampling and Recent History

I know a guy who does impersonations and find it amusing. The VO actor here seems to also enjoy sampling American Accents sometimes the whole of our regional dialects in the same sentence or quote. As a participant in Abel Archer 1983 I was hoping for more beyond the era's headlines.

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.

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

A great book.

Really enjoyed the book. I learned quite alot, and am amazed at the parallels to today.

Great book - horrible narration

Fantastic historical account of how close we came to the nuclear abyss in 1983. Directly relevant to understanding Russia today and the perils of our collapsing global order. Degraded by horrendously bad narration by a British performer. If your involved in national security or study history, buy the hard copy.

An article or a book

The author doesn’t have enough material for a book length treatment of Able Archer. Too bad. So we are treated to superficial chapters on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Gorbachev era, and other material at the level of a high school text book. The narrator’s American accident is ludicrous and grating. Think of someone trying to do and comical imitation of an incompetent mimic imitation Bill Casey.