Intelligence played a crucial part in the genesis, management and resolution of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the world's closest brush with nuclear war. This study examines the role and performance of all three intelligence communities centrally involved in this event: American, Soviet and Cuban.

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...

Robert S. McNamara is one of modern America's most controversial figures. His opinions, policies, and actions have led to a firestorm of debate, ignited most recently by Errol Morris's Academy Award-winning film, The Fog of War. In the companion book, editors James G. Blight and janet M. Lang use lessons from McNamara's life to examine issues of war and peace in the 20th century. McNamara's career spans some of America's defining events--from the end of World War I, through the course of World War II, and the unfolding of the Cold War in Cuba, Vietnam, and around the world. The Fog of War...

With Wilson's Ghost, Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight deliver an impassioned plea and a decisive and multi-faceted program for making the 21st century a more peaceful century than the last. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the war that has followed, have made their argument even more imperative. In a provocative synthesis of the pragmatic, historical, and philosophical arguments for avoiding war and achieving a sustainable peace, McNamara and Blight put forth a plan for realizing Woodrow Wilson's dream. The plan begins with a moral imperative that establishes the...

'... an extraordinarily accurate and insightful account of the Cuban missile crisis. I remember well the fear of which he writes so persuasively.'-Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson

The Virtual JFK DVD is now available For more information on the film companion to the book, visit http: //www.virtualjfk.com/ It Matters Who Is President--Then and Now At the heart of this provocative book lies the fundamental question: Does it matter who is president on issues of war and peace? The Vietnam War was one of the most catastrophic and bloody in living memory, and its lessons take on resonance in light of America's current devastating involvement in Iraq. Tackling head-on the most controversial and debated "what if" in U.S. foreign policy, this unique work explores what...

'Becoming Enemies' brings the unique methods of critical oral history to understand US and Iranian relations from the fall of the Shah in 1978 through the Iranian hostage crisis and the Iran-Iraq war.

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, DDD 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...