Fidel; A Critical Portrait

New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc, 1986. First Edition. First Printing. Hardcover. Good/good. 25 cm, 703 pages, endpaper maps, notes, chapter notes, bibliography, index, Frontis illustration. Some wear, tears, chips, soiling and creasing to DJ. Signed by the author on half-title page. Fep corner creased, small corner creases on other pages. Tadeusz Witold Szulc (July 25, 1926 - May 21, 2001) was an author and foreign correspondent for The New York Times from 1953 to 1972. Szulc is credited with breaking the story of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Szulc was born in Warsaw, Poland. In 1940 he emigrated from Poland to join his family. In 1945 he went to work as a reporter for the Associated Press in Rio de Janeiro. In 1968 he was a reporter in Czechoslovakia during the Soviet invasion to quell the Prague Spring. In 1947 he moved to New York City, and in 1954 he became an American citizen. From 1953 to 1972 Szulc was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. On April 6, 1961, nine days before the CIA-supported Bay of Pigs invasion, Szulc wrote a Times article stating that an invasion of Cuba was "imminent." President Kennedy became aware of the article and personally telephoned the Times' publisher to demand that the story be reduced in prominence and detail. His interest in Cuba continue over time, with the publication of an in-depth biography of Fidel Castro. The author was the New York Times reporter who broke the Bay of Pigs story. Never before has any biographer had such close access to Fidel Castro as did Tad Szulc. The outcome of a long, direct relationship, this riveting portrait reveals astonishing and exclusive information about Cuba, the revolution, and the notorious, larger-than-life leader who has ruled his country with an iron fist for more than forty years.Only Tad Szulc could bring Fidel to such vivid life--the loves and losses of the man, the devious tactics of the conspirator, the triumphs and defeats of the revolutionary leader who challenged an American president and brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster.From Jesuit schools to jungle hideouts and the Palace of the Revolution, here is Fidel...The Untold Story. ''Fidel: A Critical Portrait,'' cast the Cuban leader as a Latin caudillo ''wrapped in a Marxist-Leninist mantle of convenience.''.