On October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union delivered a note to Finland suggesting military consultations with reference to the tense international situation. President Urho Kekkonen, who was at the time in the US with his key foreign policy advisors, wanted absolutely to avoid such consultations. Kekkonen was in the early phases of gathering Western support for its policy of active neutrality, with recognition from France, the UK, and the US. . For Finland the note was a real shock, which coincided with the crisis in Berlin and the Soviet Union’s mega nuclear test. Kekkonen wanted to solve the crisis politically with Khrushchev and travelled to Novosibirsk for negotiations. On the eve of that journey, President Kennedy sent a secret message to Kekkonen, assuring him of US Western support. Had Kekkonen failed in Novosibirsk, Finland could have become another scene of Cold War confrontation. Gordon F Sander has written an interesting, well documented and detailed book about the crisis. Among his valuable sources are two transcripts of the negotiations between Kekkonen and Kennedy in Washington. The focus of Sander’s work is on Finland’s post-war history, providing a solid background. Occasionally he allows a journalistic style to override the historian, which might mislead uninformed readers: thus, for instance, Lenin was not Kekkonen’s hero, nor were Soviet ambassadors in Helsinki Kekkonen’s friends. As a whole, Sander paints an interesting account of Kekkonen and Finland’s foreign policy, and the Note crisis in particular. With Kekkonen’s diplomatic success, Finland’s Western integration developed further, and the path for its policy of active neutrality and bridge building became clearer, bearing fruit later in the CSCE process.