Castro's decision to spin Cuba into the Soviet orbit and ultimately embroil the Caribbean island in the Cold War was part of his "grand design", contends Mark Falcoff, not a reaction to specific American policies. In his new book, the American Enterprise Institute scholar shatters long-standing myths about the early years of the Cuban revolution, drawing primarily on previously classified source materials, but also memoirs, congressional testimony, and other primary sources. Much of the text rests upon the more than one-thousand page Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960: Cuba, published by the U.S. Department of State, but here enriched with notes, additional materials and clarifying references, and linked by a narrative which provides a necessary historical and chronological background.

Mark Falcoff is a resident scholar at AEI.