WYDEN : Bay of Pigs (fülszöveg)
Bay of Pigs is the first complete, detailed, authentic account of one of the most dramatic (and traumatic) events in American history. Based on eyewitness accounts (Fidel Castro was interviewed by the author for over six hours), Bay of Pigs brilliantly re-creates the climactic moment in the American attempt to overthrow Castro.
In a compelling and sweeping work of history that rivals such great classics as The Longest Day and The Guns of August, Peter Wyden tells the whole story, from the earliest plans and discussions in the most secret sections of the CIA, to the mounting of an immense covert military operation and the day-to-day, hour-by-hour agony of the President and his advisers as it gradually dawns upon them that the landings are going to fail ignominiously.
Here, for the first time, is the true record of the conversations, decisions, individual acts of heroism, mistakes and tragic misunderstandings that led to one of the most notorious and public failures of American power. Peter Wyden has had access to many hitherto secret documents and has interviewed the major participants, the secret planners, the CIA organizers, the civilians and the combatants on both sides, including Cuban exiles, American military commanders and pilots, and the highest advisers to the President. He has uncovered and interviewed eyewitnesses whose identities were kept secret for a generation, and they have revealed to him what they knew, what they saw, what they did.
The result is a major document, a work of history that not only records an event until now mostly the subject of rumor, but also establishes, among other things, that American military participation in the operation was far greater than has been supposed (or than President Kennedy had authorized), and that the shelling of a U.S. destroyer off the landing beaches actually came within a hairsbreadth of igniting World War Three.
In a narrative of extraordinary suspense, drive and power, Wyden describes in detail how the CIA acquired its private air force, and how the planners ignored coral reefs, almost dooming the invasion from the start. He reveals the presence of an American combat leader on the beaches, and details the CIA's bizarre preparations for the invasion, the staging of a dummy invasion to confuse Castro, the fake crash landing of a phony Castro warplane in Florida, the exclusion of Cuba's government-in-exile from the final planning (and their degrading incarceration), and a thousand other glimpses of what has been, until now, America's most secret war.
His cast of characters is immense and fascinating, from such major figures as Richard Bissell, who planned the operation and led the effort to persuade the President to authorize the "go-ahead," to the hundreds of planners, spies, soldiers-of-fortune, exiles and ordinary citizens who were swept into it....
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| KATALÓGUS | TARTALOM |
