Ten Days in Harlem
Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s
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- 11,99 €
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- 11,99 €
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Rising star Simon Hall captures the spirit of the 1960s in ten days that revolutionised the Cold War: Fidel Castro's visit to New York.
'With its cool judgements and blackly comic sense of irony, Hall's book is a rare pleasure to read.'
DOMINIC SANDBROOK, Literary Review
'A lively account . . . Ten Days in Harlem doesn't stint on piquant detail.'
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
'[A] perceptive, thoroughly researched and readable study.'
IRISH TIMES
New York City, September 1960. Fidel Castro - champion of the oppressed, scourge of colonialism, and leftist revolutionary - arrives for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. His visit to the UN represents a golden opportunity to make his mark on the world stage.
Fidel's shock arrival in Harlem is met with a rapturous reception from the local African American community. He holds court from the iconic Hotel Theresa as a succession of world leaders, black freedom fighters and counter-cultural luminaries - everyone from Nikita Khrushchev to Gamal Abdel Nasser, Malcolm X to Allen Ginsberg - come calling. Then, during his landmark address to the UN General Assembly - one of the longest speeches in the organisation's history - he promotes the politics of anti-imperialism with a fervour, and an audacity, that makes him an icon of the 1960s.
In this unforgettable slice of modern history, Simon Hall reveals how these ten days were a foundational moment in the trajectory of the Cold War, a turning point in the history of anti-colonial struggle, and a launching pad for the social, cultural and political tumult of the decade that followed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
University of Leeds historian Hall (1956: The World in Revolt) delivers a wide-ranging exploration of the 10 days that Cuban leader Fidel Castro spent in New York for the opening session of the 15th UN General Assembly in September 1960. Castro's trip, Hall contends, "proved to be both a turning point in the history of the Cold War and a foundational moment in the creation of what we think of as the Sixties.' " Hall vividly profiles Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, civil rights activist Malcolm X, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and Ghanaian head-of-state Kwame Nkrumah, among other world leaders who met with Castro, and describes the young revolutionary holding court at Harlem's Hotel Theresa. Castro's four-and-a-half-hour speech to the General Assembly ("still a UN record," Hall notes) railing against imperialism and American empire was dismissed by his enemies as a "tirade," but he returned to Cuba with a solid reputation as a hero for oppressed people around the world. Hall's informative, page-turning account captures the cultural and political tumult of the era, and the fervent idealism that made Castro a revolutionary icon. Political history buffs will want to take a look.
