Jessica Tuchman Mathews, daughter of "The Guns of August" author Barbara Tuchman, observes that "reasons to doubt that there could be a limited nuclear war [include those that emerge from any study of history, a knowledge of how humans act under pressure, or experience of government." Apposite evidence for this is provided in Martin J. Sherwin's "Gambling with Armageddon", which makes clear, on the basis of recently declassified documents, that it was a matter of sheer chance that war was averted during the Cuban Missile Crisis: numerous events, had they taken a slightly different course, could each have precipitated nuclear war.