The text in this publication is identical to that prepublished on the Internet site HISTORY NEWS NETWORK on July 21, 2008 with permission of the author and through arrangement with its editor, Rick Shenkman, Ph.D. Approximately 7489 words.
Readers will want to keep in mind that this narrative description was written for encyclopedia publication as 1960 was about to fade into 1961. The text has not been modified in facts, wording, or indeed anything except a few commas and several paragraph modifications.
The wording of the following essay is precisely that placed in the mail on December 30, 1960. It was written for the New International Year Book for 1961. Although I was duly paid for this after working hours effort, the manuscript was returned to me, for there was a dispute between the publishers and the writer over the paragraphs dealing with Fidel Castro’s degree of attachment to Communism, for example, “…the Castro regime…turned to the Communist Bloc for military and economic aid and for ideological comfort.” That sentiment may have been regarded by the encyclopedia’s final review persons as conjectural, or too pessimistic, as unsuitable for their audience, likely to provoke overseas readers or, perhaps they thought me downright wrong. As for me, then a confident administrative editor who read Cold War material almost daily as a RAND Corporation staff member, my assessment of Castro’s movement toward the Third International seemed fully warranted and not to be edited out. In addition, after looking at the unsigned and much shorter version ultimately run by the yearbook, I think there may have been in house editorial decisions of which I—not an employee–was not made aware at the time. Continue reading The United States in 1960 →
