Dark Beyond Darkness

Jim Blight and janet Lang, husband and wife and colleagues for forty years, are on the faculty of the Department of History, and the Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo Ontario, Canada. Their research on the history of U.S. foreign policy has included path-breaking work not only on the Cuban missile crisis but also U.S.-Russian relations, the Vietnam war, and U.S-Iran relations. Their most recent book is The Armageddon Letters: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

• Authors’ NotePrologue:Armageddon in Retrospect: On the Road with Papa & The BoyPart One: DarkChapter 1: Shit (Almost) Happened in October 1962: The Struggle to Avoid Armageddon Involves the Struggle of Memory Against Forgetting. Chapter 2: The Bullshit: Bad Guys Threaten; Good Guys Stand Firm; Good Guys Win; Bad Guys Lose; the Little Guy Doesn’t Matter; JFK’s Moxie Prevails. Chapter 3: The Truth: Big Guys Ignore Little Guy; Feeling Doomed, Little Guy Throws Caution to the Wind, Starts Shooting, and Asks Big Friend to Nuke the U.S.; Armageddon Nearly Occurs. Part Two: DarkerChapter 4: Habitable History: How Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall Became the Template for a “WABAC” Machine for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Chapter 5: Be Robert McNamara: Bringing the Abolition Message Home, With (and Without) “Maximum Bob” Chapter 6: Be Fidel Castro: A Leader at the Hinge of the World. Part Three: DarkestChapter 7: Armageddon in Slow Motion: More Bullshit and Truth about Avoiding Armageddon in the 21st Century.Chapter 8: Armageddon Oops! Nuclear War via Mechanical and/or Human Screw-up.Chapter 9: On The Road Again Via Climate Catastrophe: From a 19th Century Volcanic Eruption to a 21st Century Nuclear Winter. Part Four: The Darkness Defined and Defied (via the Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis)Chapter 10: Be Anybody WABAC: Empathy, Not Sympathy is the Key. Chapter 11: Darkness Visible:Findings, Takeaways and Imperatives of the Cuban Missile CrisisChapter 12: The Black Saturday Manifesto: Abolishing Nuclear Weapons One Anniversary Per Year, For As Long As It Takes.Epilogue:Show Us Your Darkness: Warning Given! Warning Received?AcknowledgmentsPermissions & CreditsNotesIndexAbout the Authors

Blight and Lang, married scholars at the University of Waterloo, use the Cuban missile crisis as a case study in developing a long argument against nuclear weapons. The authors, decades-long advocates of nuclear disarmament, advance their premise here by presenting the U.S.-Soviet crisis over missiles in Cuba from the perspective of the Cuban government. They argue that the Cuban leadership’s role in the crisis has been underappreciated and that Cuban leadership was very willing to sacrifice Cuba to provoke a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. It is an interesting thesis.... [T]his book will be of interest to those drawn to the anti-nuclear movement and those looking for an uncommon viewpoint on the event.