More than a half-dozen international conferences in 15 years have transformed scholarly understanding of history's most dangerous crisis. These include a March 2001 conference in Havana, Cuba, in collaboration with the National Security Archive at George Washington University (GWU), on the April 1961 invasion at the Bay of Pigs; and an October 2002 conference in Havana, also in collaboration with the Archive, which focused on the nuclear danger during the missile crisis. Cuban President Fidel Castro hosted both conferences and participated fully in the discussions.
In the fall of 2002, Professor Blight published a new book on the crisis, Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba's Struggle with the Superpowers after the Missile Crisis (with Philip Brenner of American University, Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), and a new expanded edition of Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the Soviet Collapse (with Bruce J. Allyn of Harvard University and David A. Welch of the University of Toronto). The book was revised for the fortieth anniversary of the Crisis. Rowman & Littlefield published both editions (1993 and 2002).
For more information about Critical Oral History, see International Critical Oral History and the Cuban Missile Crisis: An Introduction by janet Lang.
Project Team: Thomas J. Biersteker and P. Terrence
Hopmann, Watson Institute; Ralph Begleiter
'71, University of Delaware; Thomas S.
Blanton and Peter Kornbluh, National
Security Archive, George Washington
University; Robert Brigham, Vassar College;
Kathy Le '98, Boston, MA; Robert S.
McNamara, Washington, D.C.; Charles Neu,
Brown University; David Welch, University
of Toronto; and Pieter Biersteker '05, Marcella Bombardieri '99, Boston Globe, and
Peter Kaval '02, currently serving on
Congressman Richard Gephardt's presidential
campaign staff.
