ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Research institutes and scholars have played an important part in the declassification of Cuba-related documents. The National Security Archive’s Cuba Documentation Project, directed by historian Peter Kornbluh, is an online collection of declassified documents on Cuba from the United States, Soviet Union, and Cuba. The National Security Archive also has an extensive collection of declassified U.S. documents on Cuba at its research center on the George Washington University campus in Washington, D.C.

The Cold War International History Project Bulletin, sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., publishes declassified documents from the USSR on Cuba translated into English.

Professors James G. Blight (Brown University), Bruce J. Allyn (John F. Kennedy School of Government), and David A. Welch (University of Toronto) convened a series of international conferences on the Cuban missile crisis. Conference organizers provided former U.S., Soviet, and Cuban officials with declassified documents to stimulate what Blight, Allyn, and Welch call a “critical oral history.”⁷⁷⁷

With regard to Cuban history and U.S. policy on the island, I am intellectually indebted to the work of a quartet of pioneering historians: Jules R. Benjamin, Thomas G. Paterson, Louis A. Pérez Jr., and Hugh Thomas.

I am indebted to Jules Benjamin, and Bill Burr and Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive for their comments on draft chapters. My thanks go out to David Beardon for his comments on early drafts. Fred Warner deserves special recognition for reading and commenting on the entire first draft of Gangsterismo. My companion DeDe Faller not only read the whole manuscript but also put up with sharing a tight living space with a couple dozen file folder boxes of photocopies of U.S. documents on Cuba. And thanks to Frank DeBenedictis for many discussions on Cuba, Cuban exiles, and Cold War history.

I was fortunate to work with Gary Heidt of the Signature Literary Agency and OR Books co-publisher John Oakes. Thank you, Gary, for your commitment to Gangsterismo. Your commitment was essential. John put his editorial skills and wisdom to good use in making the book’s narrative sharper and tighter. Thank you, John and OR Books, for the care you took in the editing process at a time when big publishing houses are cutting back on editing services.

I would like to thank Courtney Andujar of OR Books for the design of Gangsterismo and Brook Wilensky-Lanford for her copy editing.

Serious students of the past know we cannot do our work without the vital assistance of archivists and librarians. I owe a special thank you to the staff of Archives II, where I have spent countless hours poring over documents from the JFKAC, especially Steven D. Tilley, chief of the collection, and archivists Martha Wagner Murphy and Mary Kay Schmidt. I want to express my gratitude to David Haight of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Suzanne Forbes and June Payne of the John F. Kennedy Library, Regina Greenwell of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, and Pamela Eisenberg of the Richard M. Nixon Library.

I would also like to thank Stephanie Smith of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the staff of the Andrew St. George Collection at Yale University Library, and the librarians and staff of the Library of Congress.

It was a pleasure to work with Dr. Hortensia Calvo, director of the Latin America Library of Tulane University, who allowed me to preview images of Cuban nightlife from the library’s Alan Boss Collection before it was fully processed. Thank you.

I also owe a special thanks to John Radanovich, author of Wildman of Rhythm: The Life and Music of Benny More (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009), for permission to use an image from his private collection of Benny More performing at the Ali Bar.

Ultimately my deepest debts are to those historians who taught me I could make the past come alive by immersing myself in archival collections. I learned to love poring over old documents and other primary sources as a student in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in the 1960s. At York University, Distinguished Research Professor Gabriel Kolko showed me archival and primary source research could reveal Cold War secrets.