Sad and Luminous Days ─ Cuba's Struggle with the Superpowers After the Missile Crisis

If the Soviet Union and the United States were both winners of the Cuban Missile Crisis, able to walk away without falling into war, Cuba perceived itself as the big loser, betrayed by the Soviets and lacking deterrents to US aggression after the withdrawal of Soviet military materiel and personnel. It is this Cuban side of the crisis that Blight (international relations, Brown U.) and Brenner (international relations, American U. in Washington, DC) explore, paying particular attention to Cuba's strained relations with the Soviets in the aftermath of the crisis. The centerpiece of the text is a secret 1968 speech by Fidel Castro outlining the lessons of the crisis and Cuba's relations with the Soviet Union. The speech is sandwiched by chapters that describe the basic outlines of the crisis and Cuba's perspective on the crisis and the changing Soviet-Cuban relations over the course of the 1960s. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

James G. Blight is professor of international relations at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies and is the author or co-author of more than a dozen books on U.S. foreign policy, including five on the Cuban missile crisis. Philip Brenner is professor of international relations at American University in Washington, DC, and chair of American University's Inter-Disciplinary Council on the Americas. A specialist in U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America, he has been engaged in research about U.S.-Cuban relations since 1974.