The Cuban Missile Crisis in American memory
Subtitle: myths versus reality
By: Sheldon M. Stern
Series: Stanford nuclear age series; Stanford nuclear age series
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Stanford, California
Language: eng
Number of pages: 208
ISBN-13: 9780804783767; 9780804783774
Subjects: Historiography; Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962; National Security Council (U.S.).; National Security Council (U.S.). Executive Committee; Foreign relations
Description: This book exposes the misconceptions, half-truths, and outright lies that have shaped the still dominant but largely mythical version of what happened in the White House during those harrowing two weeks of secret Cuban missile crisis deliberations. A half-century after the event it is surely time to demonstrate, once and for all, that RFK's Thirteen Days and the personal memoirs of other ExComm members cannot be taken seriously as historically accurate accounts of the ExComm meetings.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: History : from reel to real; title: The template : Robert F. Kennedy's Thirteen days; title: The real Robert Kennedy; title: The mythmaking of Robert McNamara; title: The forgotten voice of Dean Rusk; title: The erratic expertise of Llewellyn Thompson; title: The selective memory of McGeorge Bundy; title: The determined diplomacy of Adlai Stevenson; title: The Trollope ploy myth; title: An unanticipated consequence : Lyndon Johnson and the Cuban Missile Crisis; title: Conclusion : leadership matters; title: Epilogue : What if?