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300 pages of documents include: telegrams, memoranda of conversations, instructions to diplomats, etc.
In 1961 at the Bay of Pigs, CIA-trained and -organized Cuban exiles aiming to overthrow Fidel Castro were soundly defeated. Most were taken prisoner by Cuban armed forces. Fearing another U.S. invasion of its new ally, the Soviet Union sneaked into Cuba strategic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads and Soviet troops armed with tactical nuclear weapons. However, a U-2 spy plane flight would soon find the Soviet missile sites, thus sparking the famous missile crisis. For thirteen terrifying days, the world watched nervously as the two superpowers moved toward escalation, holding the world's fate in their hands. Finally, Nikita Khrushchev blinked. He agreed to withdraw the weapons from Cuba i...
In October 1962, when the Soviet Union deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba, the most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War ensued, bringing the world close to the brink of nuclear war. Over two tense weeks, U.S. president John F. Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev managed to negotiate a peaceful resolution to what was nearly a global catastrophe. Drawing on the best recent scholarship and previously unexamined documents from the archives of the former Soviet Union, this introductory volume examines the motivations and calculations of the major participants in the conflict, sets the crisis in the context of the broader history of the global Cold War, and traces the effects of the cr...
*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-...
Presents an integrated, comprehensive record of U.S. decisionmaking during the most dangerous U.S.-Soviet confrontation in the nuclear era. Some 3,400 unique records relevant to the crisis, totalling approximately 17,500 pages, are reproduced. Much of the documentation focuses on U.S. decisionmaking during what Robert Kennedy called the "Thirteen Days" of the missile crisis--from McGeorge Bundy's October 16, 1962 briefing of President Kennedy on the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba to Nikita Khrushchev's October 28 decision to withdraw the weapons. The numerous intelligence reports, diplomatic cables, political analyses, military situation reports, and meeting minutes included in the set portray both the deliberative process and the execution of critical decisions made by the Kennedy administration during the crisis.
"The Kremlinologist chronicles major events of the Cold War through the prism of the life of one of its top diplomats, Llewellyn Thompson. His life went from the wilds of the American West to the inner sanctums of the White House and the Kremlin. As the ambassador to Moscow, he became an important advisor to presidents and a key participant in major twentieth-century events, including the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. Yet, unlike his contemporaries McGeorge Bundy and George C. Marshall--who considered Thompson one of the most crucial actors in the Cold War and the "unsung hero" of the Cuban Missile Crisis--he has not been the subject of a major biography until now. Thompson's dau...
Contributing Authors Include John F. Kennedy, Everett McKinley Dirksen, Charles A. Halleck, And Many Others.
Prelude to Leadership is the private diary of John F. Kennedy when he was a 28-year-old reporter in Europe. It offers a short yet intimate look into the mind of the man who was to become the 35th President of the United States. As World War II was ending and the Cold War was just beginning, a young naval hero decommissioned before war's end because of his crippling injuries, traveled through a devastated Europe. During the trip, John F. Kennedy kept a diary, never before published. As the diary makes clear, that European trip was a turning point in the future President's life. It was on this trip that Kennedy first confronted the "long twilight struggle" for the preservation of Western freedom that would define his Presidency. In these few months an agenda for a Presidency began to be forged, and the closing pages of the diary make clear that it was at this moment in time that Kennedy began laying plans for his first run for Congress , the first step in his journey to the White House.