The Lesson of Cuba

The Lesson of Cuba
Author: United States. Department of State. Bureau of Public Affairs
Publisher:
Total Pages: 16
Release: 1961
Genre: Cuba
ISBN:

Nuclear Folly

Nuclear Folly
Author: Serhii Plokhy
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2021-04-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0141993294

*Shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History* 'An enthralling account of a pivotal moment in modern history. . . replete with startling revelations about the deception and mutual suspicion that brought the US and Soviet Union to the brink of Armageddon in October 1962' Martin Chilton, Independent The definitive new history of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize For more than four weeks in the autumn of 1962 the world teetered. The consequences of a misplaced step during the Cuban Missile Crisis could not have been more grave. Ash and cinder, famine and fallout; nuclear war between the two most-powerful nations on Earth. In Nuclear Folly, award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy tells the riveting story of those weeks, tracing the tortuous decision-making and calculated brinkmanship of John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and of their advisors and commanders on the ground. More often than not, Plokhy argues, the Americans and Soviets simply misread each other, operating under mutual distrust, second-guesses and false information. Despite all of this, nuclear disaster was avoided thanks to one very human reason: fear. Drawing on an impressive array of primary sources, including recently declassified KGB files, Plokhy masterfully illustrates the drama of those tense days. Authoritative, fast-paced and unforgettable, this is the definitive new account of the Cold War's most perilous moment.

Letters from Cuba

Letters from Cuba
Author: Ruth Behar
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2021-08-31
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0525516492

Pura Belpré Award Winner Ruth Behar's inspiring story of a Jewish girl who escapes Poland to make a new life in Cuba, where she works to rescue the rest of her family The situation is getting dire for Jews in Poland on the eve of World War II. Esther's father has fled to Cuba, and she is the first one to join him. It's heartbreaking to be separated from her beloved sister, so Esther promises to write down everything that happens until they're reunited. And she does, recording both the good--the kindness of the Cuban people and her discovery of a valuable hidden talent--and the bad: the fact that Nazism has found a foothold even in Cuba. Esther's evocative letters are full of her appreciation for life and reveal a resourceful, determined girl with a rare ability to bring people together, all the while striving to get the rest of their family out of Poland before it's too late. Based on Ruth Behar's family history, this compelling story celebrates the resilience of the human spirit in the most challenging times.

The Glorious Art of Peace

The Glorious Art of Peace
Author: John Gittings
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2012-02-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199575762

A ground-breaking history of the arts of peace, from Confucius and Ancient Greece through to the 21st century, opening an alternative window on history to show the strength of the case for peace which has been argued from ancient times onwards.

90 Miles to Havana

90 Miles to Havana
Author: Enrique Flores-Galbis
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2010-08-03
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1429969679

When Julian's parents make the heartbreaking decision to send him and his two brothers away from Cuba to Miami via the Pedro Pan operation, the boys are thrust into a new world where bullies run rampant and it's not always clear how best to protect themselves. 90 Miles to Havana is a 2011 Pura Belpre Honor Book for Narrative and a 2011 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Back Channel to Cuba

Back Channel to Cuba
Author: William M. LeoGrande
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 585
Release: 2015-09-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469626616

History is being made in U.S.-Cuban relations. Now in paperback and updated to tell the real story behind the stunning December 17, 2014, announcement by President Obama and President Castro of their move to restore full diplomatic relations, this powerful book is essential to understanding ongoing efforts toward normalization in a new era of engagement. Challenging the conventional wisdom of perpetual conflict and aggression between the United States and Cuba since 1959, Back Channel to Cuba chronicles a surprising, untold history of bilateral efforts toward rapprochement and reconciliation. William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh here present a remarkably new and relevant account, describing how, despite the intense political clamor surrounding efforts to improve relations with Havana, negotiations have been conducted by every presidential administration since Eisenhower's through secret, back-channel diplomacy. From John F. Kennedy's offering of an olive branch to Fidel Castro after the missile crisis, to Henry Kissinger's top secret quest for normalization, to Barack Obama's promise of a new approach, LeoGrande and Kornbluh uncovered hundreds of formerly secret U.S. documents and conducted interviews with dozens of negotiators, intermediaries, and policy makers, including Fidel Castro and Jimmy Carter. They reveal a fifty-year record of dialogue and negotiations, both open and furtive, that provides the historical foundation for the dramatic breakthrough in U.S.-Cuba ties.

Sad and Luminous Days

Sad and Luminous Days
Author: James G. Blight
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2007-02-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1461642205

In October 1962 school children huddled under their desks and diplomats feverishly negotiated as the world sat on the brink of nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the most dangerous moment in modern history and resulted in a changed worldview for the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba. In tracing the developments of the missile crisis and beyond, Sad and Luminous Days presents and interprets a heretofore unavailable (and largely unknown) secret speech that Castro delivered to the Cuban leadership in 1968. In it, Castro reflects on the crisis and reveals the distrust and bitterness that characterized Cuban-Soviet relations in 1968. Blight and Brenner frame the annotated speech with an examination of the missile crisis itself, and an analysis of Cuban-Soviet relations between 1962–1968, ending with an epilogue that highlights the lessons the missile crisis offers us in the current search for security and a stable world order. Sad and Luminous Days sheds new light on Cuban-Soviet relations and should be required reading not only for Cold-War scholars and historians, but also for anyone intrigued by the drama of the thirteen momentous days in October 1962.

Restricted Data

Restricted Data
Author: Alex Wellerstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 558
Release: 2021-04-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 022602038X

"Nuclear weapons, since their conception, have been the subject of secrecy. In the months after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American scientific establishment, the American government, and the American public all wrestled with what was called the "problem of secrecy," wondering not only whether secrecy was appropriate and effective as a means of controlling this new technology but also whether it was compatible with the country's core values. Out of a messy context of propaganda, confusion, spy scares, and the grave counsel of competing groups of scientists, what historian Alex Wellerstein calls a "new regime of secrecy" was put into place. It was unlike any other previous or since. Nuclear secrets were given their own unique legal designation in American law ("restricted data"), one that operates differently than all other forms of national security classification and exists to this day. Drawing on massive amounts of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time at the author's request, Restricted Data is a narrative account of nuclear secrecy and the tensions and uncertainty that built as the Cold War continued. In the US, both science and democracy are pitted against nuclear secrecy, and this makes its history uniquely compelling and timely"--

Kennedy Tapes Concise Edition

Kennedy Tapes Concise Edition
Author: Ernest R May
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 580
Release: 2002-02-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780393322590

October 1962: the United States and the Soviet Union stood eyeball to eyeball, each brandishing enough nuclear weapons to obliterate civilization in the Northern Hemisphere. It was one of the most dangerous moments in world history. Day by day, for two weeks, the inner circle of President Kennedy's National Security Council debated what to do, twice coming to the brink of attacking Soviet military units in Cuba -- units equipped for nuclear retaliation. And through it all, unbeknownst to any of the participants except the President himself, tape was rolling, capturing for posterity the deliberations that might have ended the world as we know it. Now available in this new concise edition, The Kennedy Tapes retains its gripping sense of history in the making. Book jacket.

Dark Beyond Darkness

Dark Beyond Darkness
Author: James G. Blight
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2017-12-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1538102005

In Dark Beyond Darkness, James Blight and janet Lang, among the world’s foremost authorities on the Cuban missile crisis, synthesize the findings from their thirty-year project on the most dangerous moment in recorded history. Authoritative, accessible, and written with their usual flair and wit, DBD is the first book to take readers deeply inside the experience and calculations of Fidel Castro, who was willing to martyr Cuba if his new Russian ally would nuke the U.S. and destroy it. Blight and Lang have established that in October 1962, the world was on the brink of Armageddon, and that we escaped by luck. Their history is scary but unimpeachably accurate: we just barely escaped the cold and the dark in October 1962. Their history also comes with a warning: we are currently at risk not only of Armageddon-fast, in a war between superpowers, but Armageddon-in-Slow-Motion (the result a climate catastrophe following a regional nuclear war), and from Armageddon, Oops! (a conflict sparked by an accident, which is misinterpreted, and ends in nuclear war). Drawing on the insights of poets, musicians and novelists, as well as climate scientists and agronomists, they show the terrible risk we run by refusing to abolish nuclear weapons.