Description
On New Year's Day 1959, Fidel Castro's revolutionary movement overthrew the ruling regime in Cuba, bringing the Cold War to the United States' doorstep and setting the island nation and its superpower neighbor on a collision course. The battle came in April 1961 on the southern coast of Cuba at the Bahía de los Cochinosthe Bay of Pigs. In a minute-by-minute chronicle that is as even-handed as it is dramatic, J. J. Valdés gets to the heart of this Cold War debacle, from the beaches of Cuba to the corridors of power in Washington and Havana.
Long entangled in Cuba's economy and politics, the United States watched Castro's revolution carefully and grew wary as Castro drew closer to the Soviet Union. Within a few months, the CIA, with President Dwight Eisenhower's approval, was recruiting and training Cuban exiles for a paramilitary force to topple Castro. By early 1961, when John F. Kennedy became president after campaigning on a hard line on Cuba, the CIA plan had taken on a lif