TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

1 Past as Prologue

2 Seeds of Gangsterismo

3 Batista’s Second Coup d’Etat

4 Triumph of the Cuban Revolution

5 Gangsterismo Regroups in Exile

6 “Castro Must Go”

7 U.S. and U.S.S.R. Square Off Over Cuba

8 CIA Concocts Poison Capsules for Castro

9 Kennedy Sounds a Cold War Call to Arms

10 Bay of Pigs: A Disaster Waiting to Happen

11 Cuba Is Drawn Deeper into the Cold War

12 Operation Mongoose: “Liberal Theory of Counterinsurgency”

13 CIA Delivers More Poison Capsules to the Mafia

Photo Section

14 “Hedgehogs Down the Americans’ Trousers”

15 To the Brink of Nuclear War and Back

16 “Autonomous Operations”

17 Castro and Khrushchev Reconcile

18 Kennedy at a Crossroads in Cuba in November 1963

19 Cuba Cools as Cold War Hot Spot

Acknowledgments

Archival Sources

Notes