"One Hell of a Gamble": Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Based on classified Soviet archives, including the files of Nikita Khrushchev and the KGB, "One Hell of a Gamble" offers a riveting play-by-play history of the Cuban missile crisis from American and Soviet perspectives simultaneously.
No other book offers this inside look at the strategies of the Soviet leadership. John F. Kennedy did not live to write his memoirs; Fidel Castro will not reveal what he knows; and the records of the Soviet Union have long been sealed from public view: Of the most frightening episode of the Cold War--the Cuban Missile Crisis--we have had an incomplete picture. When did Castro embrace the Soviet Union? What proposals were put before the Kremlin through Kennedy's back-channel diplomacy? How close did we come to nuclear war? These questions have now been answered for the first time. This important and controversial book draws the missing half of the story from secret Soviet archives revealed exclusively by the authors, including the files of Nikita Khrushchev and his leadership circle. Contained in these remarkable documents are the details of over forty secret meetings between Robert Kennedy and his Soviet contact, records of Castro's first solicitation of Soviet favor, and the plans, suspicions, and strategies of Khrushchev. This unique research opportunity has allowed the authors to tell the complete, fascinating, and terrifying story of the most dangerous days of the last half-century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Cold War now seems like a dim memory, but it was only 35 years ago, in October 1962, that the two superpowers came to the brink of nuclear war over the Caribbean island of Cuba. The diplomacy in the years immediately preceding and during this crisis is the fodder for this evenhanded, thorough study. Using a slew of recently declassified documents from Russian archives, Fursenko, the history chair at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Naftali, who teaches history at Yale, emphasize the ignorance and uncertainty that haunted all three countries during Castro's rise to power. After showing how the Cuban leader (pushed by U.S. and Soviet pressure, his brother and his own anti-imperialist urges) embraced Moscow, the authors then examine how the dominos fell: increasing Soviet-Cuban cooperation led to American military efforts (the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion), which led to Khrushchev's missile shipments to the Cubans, which, in turn provoked the U.S. to impose a "military quarantine," thus beginning the terrifying days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Most importantly, the authors detail the evolving relationship between Castro and the Soviets, as well as the 40 secret meetings between Robert Kennedy and Soviet leaders that eventually allowed Kennedy and Krushchev to stand down. If the writing is a little academic, the authors do illuminate and confirm past suppositions about the build-up to this nuclear confrontation--and how disaster was avoided.
