The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs

by Jim Rasenberger

A “balanced, engrossing account” ( Kirkus Reviews , starred review) of the Bay of Pigs crisis drawing on long-hidden CIA documents and delivering the vivid truth of five pivotal days in April 1961.

At the heart of the Bay of Pigs crisis stood President John F. Kennedy, and journalist Jim Rasenberger traces what Kennedy knew, thought, and said as events unfolded. He examines whether Kennedy was manipulated by the CIA into approving a plan that would ultimately involve the American military. He also draws compelling portraits of the other figures who played key roles in the Fidel Castro, who shortly after achieving power visited New York City and was cheered by thousands (just months before the United States began plotting his demise); Dwight Eisenhower, who originally ordered the secret program, then later disavowed it; Allen Dulles, the CIA director who may have told Kennedy about the plan before he was elected president (or so Richard Nixon suspected); and Richard Bissell, the famously brilliant “deus ex machina” who ran the operation for the CIA—and took the blame when it failed. Beyond the short-term fallout, Rasenberger demonstrates, the Bay of Pigs gave rise to further and greater woes, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and even, possibly, the assassination of John Kennedy.

Written with elegant clarity and narrative verve, The Brilliant Disaster is the most complete account of this event to date, providing not only a fast-paced chronicle of the disaster but an analysis of how it occurred—a question as relevant today as then—and how it profoundly altered the course of modern American history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, American History, Us Presidents, War, Military Fiction

480 pages, Paperback

First published April 5, 2011

Reviews

[Stefania Dzhanamova · Rating 5 out of 5]

For much of the twentieth century Cuba had remained a quasi-colony of the USA. In the 1950s, Fulgencio Batista, the last of its pliant dictators, struck lucrative deals with American gangsters, who built lavish hotels and casinos, filled them with American tourists, and turned Havana into the most glaringly sinful city in the hemisphere. American businesses dominated the country. They owned most of its sugar plantations and were heavily invested in oil, railroads, utilities, mining, and cattle ranching. Eighty percent of Cuban imports came from the United States.
Although most Americans could not or did not want to see it, Cuba’s corrupt tyranny was increasingly unpopular. In 1958 Fidel Castro’s guerrillas won a series of victories, and on the last day of the year, Batista resigned, fleeing to the Dominican Republic and taking several hundred million dollars with him. A week later, after a victorious trip across the island, Castro arrived in Havana and began a political career that would shape world history.
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, the older brother of the infamous CIA director Allen Dulles, was recuperating in nearby Jamaica when Castro seized power. “I don’t know whether this is good or bad for us,” he mused after hearing the news.
Three months later Fidel Castro made his tumultuous trip to the United States. The nascent counterculture embraced him; Malcolm X came to his hotel in Harlem while supporters cheered outside. After returning home, Castro gave a speech scorning Vice President Nixon, the highest-ranking American he met, as “an impenitent disciple of the gloomy and obstinate Foster Dulles.” Soon afterward he confiscated hundreds of millions of dollars in American investments, imprisoned thousands of suspected counterrevolutionaries, including some with close ties to the United States, and executed several hundred. Anti-Castro terror began. A large department store in Havana was set on fire, a ship in the harbor was blown up with the loss of more than one hundred lives, sugar plantations were burned, and planes from Florida dropped bombs and mysteriously disappeared. While some of the first attacks might have really been carried out by self-employed exiles, CIA Director Allen Dulles soon took control of the operation, entrusting it to his deputy director for plans, Richard Bissell, one of the restless sons of privilege Allen had recruited to help him run the CIA.

On January 15 Allen asked the Special Group (the secret body that reviewed covert operations) for authorization to begin plotting against Castro. President Eisenhower said he would favor any plot to “throw Castro out” because he was a “madman.” By mid-January, the CIA had eighteen officers in Washington and another twenty-two in Cuba designing “proposed Cuba operations.”
A lifetime of military command had given Ike the habit of denying covert operations, and he maintained it as president. Less than two weeks after he authorized plotting against the Cuban dictator, he told reporters that although he was “concerned and perplexed” by Castro’s anti-American statements, the United States would take no action against him. At a Special Group meeting on February 17, however, he brushed aside a proposal from Allen under which the CIA would sabotage Cuban sugar mills and urged him to come up with more audacious ideas, “including even possibly things that might be drastic.”
In general, Eisenhower launched the anti-Castro operation with determination and focused enthusiasm. He gave his orders directly to Allen and Dickie, and when on March 17, Dulles presented “A Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime,” written by Bissell, which proposed a multistage operation “to bring about the replacement of the Castro regime with one more devoted to the interests of the Cuban people and more acceptable to the US, in such a manner as to avoid any appearance of US intervention" by building a covert network inside Cuba, saturating the island with anti-Castro propaganda, infiltrating small teams of guerrilla fighters, using them to set off a domestic uprising, and providing a “responsible, appealing, and unified” new regime, Eisenhower said he could imagine “no better plan” and approved. He insisted only on one condition: US involvement must be kept strictly secret. “The great problem is leakage and breach of security,” he said. “Everyone must be prepared to swear he has not heard of it.”
With that statement, Ike made the overthrow of Castro an official but secret U.S. policy goal.
Notably, another curious detail emerged from this meeting: Allen spoke first, but when there were questions, he deferred to Bissell; it was an early sign that unlike in all previous oversea operations, such as the Iran coup, he would not supervise this operation. The anti-Castro plot was as ambitious a project as the CIA had ever undertaken, and much hung on the outcome. Allen, however, floated above it. Each time he and Bissell came to the White House to brief Eisenhower on its progress, Bissell took the lead while Allen listened. When Dickie briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff on April 8, Dulles did not even attend.

The bulk of Dickie Bissell's experience with the CIA came from running the theatrical “rebel air force” that had helped push Jacobo Arbenz from power in Guatemala in 1954. Most of the officers he assembled for his anti-Castro operation were also veterans of the Guatemala campaign. All had enough experience to recognize the considerable differences between Guatemala in 1954 and Cuba in 1960. One of Castro’s closest comrades, the Argentine-born guerrilla Che Guevara, had been in Guatemala in 1954 and witnessed the coup against Arbenz. Later he told Castro why it succeeded: Arbenz had foolishly tolerated an open society, which the CIA penetrated and subverted, and also preserved the existing army, which the CIA turned into its instrument. Castro agreed that a revolutionary regime in Cuba must avoid those mistakes. Upon taking power, he repressed dissent and purged the army. Many Cubans supported his regime and were ready to defend it. All of this made the prospect of overthrowing him quite daunting.
However, most of the CIA’s “best men” came from backgrounds where all things were possible, nothing ever went seriously wrong, and catastrophic reversals of fortune happened only to others. World leaders had fallen to their power. They never believed that deposing Castro would be easy, but they also enjoyed the challenge. This was why they had joined the CIA, after all. Quietly, but watched closely by Castro’s spies, CIA officers rushed across the Cuban sections of Miami, where anti-Castro fervor "ran hot", and recruited a handful of exiles to serve as the political facade for a counterrevolutionary movement, and dozens more who wanted to fight. Those would-be guerrillas were brought to camps in Florida, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, and the Panama Canal Zone and trained in tactics ranging from air assault to underwater demolition.

Meanwhile, tensions between Washington and Havana rose steadily. Cuba recognized the People’s Republic of China and signed a trade agreement with the Soviet Union. Tankers carrying Soviet petroleum arrived in Cuba. American oil companies refused to refine it. Castro nationalized the recalcitrant companies. The United States stopped buying most Cuban sugar. Cuba began selling sugar to the Soviets. In mid-1960 this hostility broke beyond politics and economics straight into the Cuban soul: the Eisenhower administration pressed the International League, one of professional baseball’s top minor leagues, to announce that it was pulling its baseball team, the Sugar Kings, out of Havana. Love of baseball is deeply ingrained in the Cuban soul. Castro, an avid fan who had been known to suspend cabinet meetings so he could watch the Sugar Kings play, protested that this blow violated “all codes of sportsmanship" and even offered to pay the team’s debts. It was to no avail. The Cuban people lost one of their strongest sentimental ties to the United States. America did to Cuba what should never be done to revolutionary countries – she pushed the Cubans behind an iron curtain raised by herself.

When on the morning of January 19, 1961, Eisenhower’s last full day in office, he welcomed Kennedy to the White House, Kennedy brought up the second most obvious crisis after Laos. He asked if they should support guerrilla operations in Cuba. “To the utmost,” Eisenhower replied. “We cannot have the present government there go on."
Thus, Kennedy faced a no-win situation: he was young, inexperienced in world affairs, and new in office. During his electoral campaign he had vowed to confront Castro. Many Americans wished him to do so. Now Allen, whom he had decided to keep at his post as Director of Central Intelligence, and Bissel were giving him a plan. Allen pointedly reminded Kennedy that canceling the operation would give him a "disposal" problem: Cuban exiles at the Guatemala camp would have to be discharged; many would return to Miami; their story would be, “We were about to overthrow Castro, but Kennedy lost his nerve and wouldn’t let us try.” This narrative would become part of Kennedy’s permanent legacy. In short, Dulles made it very clear to the President that to call off the operation would result in a very unpleasant situation.
Thus, in the words of one of Kennedy's aides, Allen and Dick didn't just brief them on the Cuban operation; they sold them on it. In a typically CIA manner, the Central Intelligence "fell in love with the plan" and ceased to think critically about it. Allen agreed with those statements, reasoning that "you present a plan, and it isn’t your job to say, ‘Well, that’s a rotten plan I’ve presented.' In presenting the merits of the plan, the tendency is always – because you’re meeting a position, you’re meeting this criticism and that criticism – to be drawn into more of a salesmanship job than you should.”

While none of the unexperienced president's secret advisers raised serious doubts about the plan, other powerful people did. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. sent Kennedy a memo warning that the United States would certainly be blamed for any invasion of Cuba, and that this would “fix a malevolent image of the new Administration in the minds of millions.” When former secretary of state Dean Acheson visited the White House and was informed about the plan for invasion of Cuba by Kennedy, Acheson was incredulous. “Are you serious?” he asked. “It doesn’t take Price Waterhouse to figure out that fifteen hundred Cubans aren’t as good as twenty-five thousand.”
Yet, Bissell somehow managed to accommodate all Kennedy's doubts about the plan. When the President complained that the chosen location for the invasion, a town below the Escambray Mountains, would be too "noisy", Dickie satisfied him by choosing a remote beach one hundred miles eastward, at the Bay of Pigs. When Kennedy worried that using sixteen disguised planes for the first wave of air strikes would increase the odds that the CIA’s role would become clear, Bissell agreed to cut the fleet to eight. Kennedy insisted that the United States military must not be involved – Bissell assured him this would not be necessary.
What made Dick Bissell allow the operation to proceed despite all these major changes, rather than telling Kennedy that they greatly reduced the chances for success, remains a mystery. Personal pride and ambition may have encouraged him; his reputation in the Central Intelligence Agency and the Kennedy administration depended on this operation, as was his position as the heir of Allen Dulles. To pull out would have equalled forfeit. Another possible reason was that Bissell assumed President Kennedy would not let it fail – would eventually do whatever was necessary to make it succeed, even if that meant sending US military forces to the rescue.
Whatever the reason, Dickie also ignored one last, glaring warning, which came only nine days before the Bay of Pigs invasion. On April 9, Jacob Esterline, the CIA officer he had put in day-to-day charge of the operation, and Colonel Jack Hawkins, its senior military planner, told him what he already knew – the new landing beach was isolated, with no local population to support the invaders and few escape routes; there would not be enough air cover to prevent Castro from counterattacking; the secrecy that was an essential part of the original plan had long ago evaporated. Given these new conditions, concluded the two, the invasion was certain to end in “terrible disaster.”
Despite Esterline and Hawkins's appeals, Bissell refused to call the plot off, and their last hope vanished. Strikingly, the two officers had considered Dick Bissell the only target for their plea; Allen Dulles had so successfully distanced himself from the operation's planning.

When on April 17, the exile force waded ashore at the Bay of Pigs, thousands of Cuban troops counterattacked. Fidel Castro himself arrived to take command. At a news conference only five days earlier, President JFK had again emphasized that there would not be, under any conditions, an intervention in Cuba by United States armed forces. When the crucial moment came, he refused to change his mind.
On that calamitous day, the invasion force was scattered by Cuban artillery, attacked by Cuban bombers, and overwhelmed by Cuban troops. At White House meetings the next day, Kennedy fended off more pleas that he send U.S. forces to support the Bay of Pigs invaders. The strongest came from his chief of naval operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke, who came to the Oval Office with an equally agitated Bissell:
“Let me take two jets and shoot down those enemy aircraft,” Burke pleaded.
“No,” Kennedy replied. “I don’t want to get the United States involved in this.”
“Can I not send in an air strike?”
“No.”
“Can we send in a few planes?”
“No, because they could be identified as United States.”
“Can we paint out their numbers?”
“No.”
Grasping for options, Burke asked if Kennedy would authorize artillery attacks on Cuban forces from American destroyers. The answer was the same: “No.”

Later that day Kennedy told an aide that he had probably made a mistake keeping Allen Dulles. By then the full scope of the disaster had also dawned on Allen, who had acted quite nonchalantly the previous day. Arriving at his old friend Richard Nixon's house, he told him that "[t]his is the worst they of my life" and that "everything is lost".
Everything was lost, indeed. More than one hundred of the invaders died. Most of the rest were rounded up and imprisoned. For Castro it was a brilliant triumph. Kennedy was staggered. “How could I have been so stupid?” he wondered aloud. Standing before reporters in the White House, the President took “sole responsibility” for the failure. Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan, mused he. From this moment on he stopped trusting experts and mainly conferred with his brother Bobby.
A year later, Castro released the Bay of Pigs prisoners in exchange for $52 million in donated food and medicine. That hardly closed the episode, however. Its effects have reverberated through history. This was the first time the CIA was fully unmasked seeking to depose the leader of a small country whose crime was defying the United States. It became a reviled symbol of imperialist intervention. A new wave of anti-Americanism began coursing around the world...

"THE BRILLIANT DISASTER" is a gripping, action-packed account of the ill-starred CIA coup against Fidel Castro. Jim Rasenberger's research is impressively meticulous, his attention to the smallest details showing through the narrative. This history both gives us access to JFK's thoughts and allows us to peek over Castro's shoulder, as well as thrusts us in the very core of action. Outstanding.

[Lawrence A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this is a good journalistic account of the planning (as it were) and ultimate failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by CIA-trained-armed-directed-and-funded Cuban exiles in April 1961, the author's determination to rely for most of his information on the surviving CIA officers and Cuban exiles who were actually involved in the operation leaves him a bit credulous when it comes to the assessment of his sources' ideologies, motivations, and veracity. Moreover, for a supposed "journalist," Rasenberger reveals his shortcomings with his conclusion that it would be "preposterous" to believe that rogue CIA agents who felt that the president betrayed them by calling off air-strikes during the invasion played a large part in the JFK assassination; heck, two of Rasenberger's Bay of Pigs "heroes"---former CIA agents E. Howard Hunt and David Atlee Phillips---made deathbed confessions that they, along with other high-ranking agency officials (James Jesus Angleton, William Harvey, Cord Meyer) were intimately involved in the assassination. All he had to do was undertake a Google search to view Hunt's confession. In addition, while Rasenberger achieves some success in attempting to place the Bay of Pigs incident in the broader context of the Cold War, his conclusion that it is unclear as to whether JFK would or would not have further escalated American involvement in Vietnam completely ignores the most recent scholarship on the issue, based almost completely on recently declassified documents, which suggests that JFK was in the process of winding down such involvement when he was killed (see JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power, by John M. Newman, originally published in 1992).

Despite my misgivings, the factual recounting of the high-level meetings leading up to the invasion made this book a worthwhile read.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is a superb, even-handed chronological, minute by minute account of the invasion day by day. It is spellbinding. Howard Jones's book isn't that bad either, but Rasenberger pints out a few flaws in that work. It reads like a novel, only better because it is true. At 480 pages, it is not long enough to tell you the whole story but long enough to rivet you to your seat while you read it. When reading the book it becomes clear that there is something called institutional memory in government, which probably lasts about 20 years.

Rasenberger does a great job of pulling together all the various info sources, including newly released "secret" documents. All of which embellishes the story that is reasonably well known, that the anti-Castro program created by Eisenhower was a clusterflub from the get go. Ike and the CIA had successfully brought down a few Latin leaders and they presumed they were good at that sort of thing. But, as Rasenberger shows, the American backed invasion was an unrealistic goal depending two unrealistic assumptions, haphazardly organized by bright, even brilliant men who together behaved pretty much like idiots. Rasenberger does a good job of showing how brilliant people could commit such folly and there appears to be plenty of blame to go around and no virtually no one involved failed to make very bad decisions and the more involved they were the more more then tended to lie about their bad judgement. For example, after the fiasco, Eisenhower denied ordering that the plan to remove Castor be instigated -- saying he only "ordered a program" "not a plan" is rather like saying I didn't spill the coffee I dropped it. It is not only dishonest but embarrassingly so.

Undoubtedly, many will find that one or another of the involved parties doesn't receive enough condemnation in Rasenberger's account. But his aim appears to be to show how wise men commit folly not to find which head can be mounted on the highest pike.

Despite the generally well written text, one line by the writer brought a laugh. Talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis, Rasenberger wrote: "For several days that October, Americans went to bed at night unsure that the world would still be there when they woke up." Either Rasenberger imagines Americans to be idiots, or this sentence slipped through the cracks in an otherwise well edited work. I note the error only for the humor; it does not appreciably detract from the book.

[Barry Sierer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jim Rasenberger’s book adds an important element that is missing from another book on the Bay of Pigs, Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story by Peter Wyden. That missing element is the political context. Rasenberger delves into the cold war mentality of the time, the breakdown in relations with Castro, and its effect on Kennedy’s election. But the most important point was that, at the time, the idea of leaving a Communist regime in power less than 100 miles off the US Coast was simply unthinkable to most Americans.

For all the time and effort that Rasenberger spends on the politics of the time, he also does a fairly good job of delving into the military aspects of the operation itself. He seamlessly braids the military developments along with the political decisions made over the course of the operation to explain how events on the skies and beaches of Cuba effected decisions made in the White house and vice versa.

This would one of the best books you could get to understand the events of April 1961.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

The past has always fascinated me. Studies of Presidential Leadership and Decision-making in times of crisis have always intrigued me. But none moreso than the five fateful days in 1961 when a new and untested President of the United States was forced to take control and lead what would soon be known as one of our nation's greatest blunders. The President was John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the crisis was the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

It should be no surprise to people that know me and my reading tastes (not to mention taken a look at my Facebook page) that I am completely and utterly fascinated by the Kennedy administration. I know an insane amount of information regarding the "thousand days of Camelot." With everything there is to know about his policies and domestic/foreign achievements I have always found the five days of the Bay of Pigs fiasco to be the part of the legacy that I find the most fascinating. I don't know why I feel that way or what it is that draws me to it so much, but I think its just the fact that so many of these men that were so young to begin with thought that they all would actually be successful in this type of undertaking. I still find it hard to believe myself that Fidel Castro's government on the island of Cuba has now outlasted/outlived ten Presidential Administrations. For those of you that are unfamiliar with this piece of history I will briefly explain its background to you now.

Fidel Castro came to power on New Year's Day, 1959 after years of waging a type of guerilla war in the mountains of Cuba (the Sierra Maestra). From the beginning, the American government knew just what type of man Castro was and just what type of government he represented: Communism. So basically they knew that however they could do it, he could not remain in power for long. Therein lay the genesis of the plot to overthrow Castro by any means necessary. At times even the thought of assassination was bandied about with certain members of the Italian Mafia offering to 'take care of things' in a direct response to Castro closing down the Mob's very lucrative Casino holdings in Havana. Originally beginning during the waning days of the Eisenhower era the plan had what you might term as a long gestational period going through numerous forms and through different people in the highest reaches of the American government.

Eventually, the Presidential election of 1960 came about. John F. Kennedy wins a narrow victory over Vice-President Richard Nixon forcing the new President-Elect's hand to take both the responsibility and the command for what was turning out to be (by that time) a full-scale invasion of the island of Cuba by refugees that were secretly trained and funded by the American government. In the end however, when it comes to JFK's response to the actual invasion itself, it all comes down to the subject of air cover during the actual fighting. Would the United States provide it or not to a country that wanted to be seen as planning and undertaking a major invasion such as this one all on its own? Suffice to say, you need to read this book to find out the answer!!!

Everything you ever wanted to know regarding this fabled piece of the overall history of the Cold War is included here and the depictions of such characters as McGeorge Bundy and Richard Bissell, not to mention Fidel Castro himself leap off the page at you in nuanced clear character portraits of one of the major set pieces of the glory days of the conflict between America and the Soviet Union, when it seemed that anything was possible, could happen and oftentimes did!

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 2011.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jim Rasenberger's The Brilliant Disaster provides a crisp recounting of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the doomed 1961 effort to overthrow Fidel Castro with an army of Cuban exiles. Rasenberger tries avoiding the pitfalls of other, partisan histories which blame either John F. Kennedy or the CIA exclusively for the debacle. He shows that there's plenty of blame to go around: Eisenhower, unnerved by Castro's communist sympathies, authorized covert operations in the waning days of his presidency; Kennedy, who had campaigned on Eisenhower and Nixon not being tough enough on the Cuban threat, went forward with it despite misgivings from advisers. The CIA, handicapped by Kennedy's insistence on not making noise, equipped an army of Cuban exiles and mercenaries to invade with limited resources, in hope of sparking a general uprising across Cuba. Rasenberger doesn't flinch in showing the political infighting backgrounding the operation, nor does he romanticize Castro, whom he argues early sacrificed his idealism for power. But the invasion, Rasenberger argues, never really had much chance of success, even if the operation had been better coordinated or if Kennedy had intervened more decisively. Castro was too popular to be toppled by a ragtag filibuster army, and however brave the invaders were the odds against them were too long, even if American airstrikes had been forthcoming. What resulted was an abject humiliation for the young president and the United States, and an encouragement for Khrushchev to extend a hand to Castro, cementing the Communist dictatorship and triggering a nuclear confrontation a year-and-a-half later. Perhaps not definitive, but a highly readable and compelling narrative of this Cold War catastrophe.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s not always easy deciding how to review a history book. You can’t give the author credit for creating a good story because they are simply telling us about something that already happened, presumably in the real world. You wouldn’t ordinarily compliment a history writer’s writing skills either; usually people who are creative with word-smithing pursue careers as authors of fiction or poetry. In fact history writers are often not very good at crafting language since what they say is supposed to be more important than how they say it. I guess you have to consider how well they bring history to life and demonstrate the importance and relevance of that history. Jim Rasenberger does just that in The Brilliant Disaster. He shows us how John F. Kennedy bungled the Bay of Pigs invasion and the effects it had on his presidency and the reputation that America had in the world as time went on as a result.

In his writing, Rasenberger knows how to introduce important elements into the story he tells without going too deeply down side roads that are relevant only up to a certain point. His handling of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution is important to this history, but he doesn’t go into an overwhelming amount of detail regarding them. Castro himself is a fascinating enough figure and the story of the Revolution is well-worth reading about, but the author here introduces just enough information to suit the story. The same can be said about the 1960 Presidential election between Nixon and Kennedy. Rasenberger shows how Kennedy, by putting the problem of Castro and Cuba in front and center stage, dealt a master blow to Nixon, ensuring his victory at the polls. Kennedy’s campaign was a small work of genius for a number of reasons, but the author sticks to the important parts.

The remainder of the first half of this book is mostly relevant, but it has a tendency to drag at times, plus the things he did right that I mentioned in the previous paragraph turn into problems later in the narrative. Lots of detail is given regarding the committee set up to plan the Bay of Pigs invasion, although in this part the author goes a little too far. He writes as if the life stories of people like Allan Dulles, Richard Bissell, and Arthur Schlesinger are central to understanding what happened, and to a certain extent they are, but the over-abundance of detail about their pasts, their personalities, and their lifestyles makes for a few slow passages along the way.

Then there is the planning itself. High-ranking members of the CIA did a poor job of planning the invasion. Their intelligence gathering was haphazard, their strategy was not well-thought out, and their expectations were misguided. They really were a team of over-confident amateurs. While Kennedy met with them and advisers from his cabinet, most of which were not shy about drawing attention to the flaws in the plan, they hemmed and hawed about what to do then they hemmed and hawed some more. After that they hemmed and hawed about the hemming and hawing until the story becomes frustratingly dull and you just want the action to begin.

Then it does. An army of Cuban exiles were trained by the CIA in Guatemala then launched an attack on Cuba from an airbase in Nicaragua. They tried to establish three beachhead landings in southern Cuba’s Bahia de Cochinos, the Bay of Pigs. Murphy’s Law went into effect and everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The Americans left the Cuban soldiers stranded while Castro’s superior forces proceeded to slaughter them. Meanwhile back in Washington, Kennedy and company did what they did best...hemming and hawing. Some of the soldiers were rescued, but a lot of them got caught and imprisoned by Castro’s military.

The details of the invasion are the strongest part of this book. Other books on the Cuban Revolution, Castro, Kennedy, and relations between America and the island nation to the south of Florida, tend to analyze the role that the Bay of Pigs played in other developments, but so far this is the most detailed account of the actual combat that happened at sea and on the ground that I have encountered so far.

The rest of the book explains how the failed invasion affected Kennedy’s self-confidence within the first year of his presidency. It also examines how the Bay of Pigs influenced American foreign policy in the years to come, especially regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis and later Cold War politics. Most significantly, the last section tells the story of how the USA, after being humiliated by Castro and the Cubans, were able to negotiate with them to get the Cuban exiles returned to American soil.

Overall, this is a book about John F. Kennedy and the CIA. Without delving into any kind of political or ideological muckraking, Rasenberger explains how CIA incompetence condemned the Bay of Pigs invasion before it began. He lays most of the blame for the operation on them while reserving a proper amount of disdain for John F. Kennedy too. But his analysis of Kennedy’s thinking is nuanced. This isn’t a work of character assassination; he shows how some of the dilemmas posed by the Cuban Revolution put Kennedy between a rock and a hard place, but he also shows how Kennedy shot himself in the foot a few times by getting himself into such dangerously tight situations to begin with. Interestingly, Rasenberger comes to the enlightening conclusion that Kennedy’s legacy will always be tethered to Fidel Castro. You just can’t understand JFK if you can’t see how closely Castro and Cuba shaped almost everything he did during his term in office. Even his assassination was tied to Cuban politics because Lee Harvey Oswald believed himself to be acting on Castro’s behalf when he pulled the trigger. Finally, Rasenberger does a great job of demonstrating cause and effect in the chain of events. Early in the book, he shows how Kennedy’s dismissive attitude pushed Castro into the arms of Khrushchev and the Soviet Union, forgetting the dictum that you should keep your fiends close but keep your enemies closer. This is sad because Castro was open to the idea of maintaining peaceful relations with America after he seized power. He eventually embraced communism because the Americans didn’t take him seriously. Contemporary Cuba is just as much America’s tragedy as it is Castro’s. The author also makes a good case for saying that, while Kennedy has often been hailed as a hero for his management of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was also his disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion that resulted in the Cuban Missile Crisis to begin with. This fact is something that Kennedy supporters are often unwilling to acknowledge.

So while The Brilliant Disaster has its setbacks, especially in reference to the painfully slow first half of the book, it succeeds in giving a uniquely vivid picture of this historical moment, analyzing the importance of the Bay of Pigs, and using a cause-and-effect methodology to demonstrate how the historic events unfolded. Now I think it would be interesting to read about the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis from a Cuban point of view. In the end, I must say that the more I read about the Kennedy presidency, the less impressed I am by his political skills. For all the charm and intelligence he brought to the White House, there was something seriously lacking when it came to decision making. Maybe America’s first television president should have gone into acting instead. Maybe he could have even done our country a great favor by convincing Ronald Reagan to forget about politics and further his career in Hollywood instead.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard of the Bay of Pigs in the context of Watergate - the connection between the Watergate burglars and Howard Hunt had been their joint interest in evicting Castro from Cuba in 1961. I had never been particularly interested in the various crises of the Cold War, but during a visit to the JFK Library this book caught my eye in the bookshop. I half-expected that I'd give up after a few dozen pages, since the subject was only of moderate interest to me. But the story that unfolded was so fascinating (in the way that train wrecks are fascinating) that I found myself finishing the book in a few days. This book is a case history of blunder upon blunder, of wishful thinking, of undue deference to authority and of last-minute meddling by people who should have made it their business to know more about the project before interfering. The CIA under Eisenhower came up with a plan to train Cuban exiles to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro. JFK made the promise to be tough on Castro a big part of his election platform, so, once elected, he could hardly shoot down the only concrete plan for dealing with Castro. But he never liked it and kept nibbling away at the military support that the planners had counted on. Fewer planes, then fewer airstrikes, then no airstrikes at all - that last decision made when the Cuban exiles had already landed and were desperately holding out against Castro's vastly superior forces, believing that air support would come any minute now. A tragic story, and one can't blame the survivors' feeling that they had been abandoned by JFK.

The most interesting part of the story is that there is not a single person to blame. The whole system failed. Richard Bissell, the CIA honcho who masterminded the plan, took the fall, but it was JFK who emasculated the plan at the last minute. Then again, did JFK fully understand what was planned, and how it was going to happen? And what about the military, who claimed that this was a CIA operation and that the Pentagon just offered some technical support? In retrospect, it seems that the entire plan was daft. How could the CIA ever have believed that anyone would swallow the story that this was a purely Cuban matter? Did anyone really believe that 1500 men had a chance against more than 200,000 militia members? Where did the unfounded belief come from that the Cuban population was massively unhappy with Castro and would stage a rebellion the second the Cuban Brigade landed on the beach ? And how was it possible that the US Ambassador to the UN, the well respected Adlai Stevenson, was completely misinformed and ended up giving an inaccurate statement to the UN that destroyed his credibility ?

At its core, this is story of groupthink. Someone came up with a bad idea (use Cuban exiles as cannon fodder for an invastion of Cuba) to meet a popular goal (get rid of Castro), and very few people had the insight and the guts to point this out. So the plan went forward, undergoing various modifications as it moved from the Eisenhower to the JFK administration. It just rolled along by its own momentum, and no warnings of its military or political risks could stop it. Not that there were many of those : people with misgivings typically kept them to themselves or wrote private memos to JFK - but not a lot of people stood up in meetings to say :"This is a disaster waiting to happen."

One of the most interesting parts of the book is the analysis of the aftermath. Not so much the efforts to bring the captured brigade members home in a "medical supplies for hostage" type deal, but the effects on JFK and American foreign policy. It can be argued that JFK's tough stance in the Cuban missile crisis had its root in his desire not to look like an incompetent wimp a second time. Idem ditto for his decision to send more troops to that little Asian country with the funny name that so few people had heard of, Viet-Nam...

The book is well written, well illustrated and follows a logical and chronological order. I recommend it for anyone with an interest in the Cold War, or the JFK presidency.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jim Rasenberger's The Brilliant Disaster was a well-written, thoroughly researched look at the Bay of Pigs fracas. I was impressed with the number of memos and communiques he presented from the CIA, various president's administrations and Cuba (the latter being the most surprising). Together they painted an excellent picture of how - but more importantly why - the events of April 17th, 1961 unfolded the way they did, and how they had a long-ranging impact on American foreign policy (the Cuban Missile Crisis, American military escalation in Vietnam, the space race, et cetera). I grew up hearing a lot of controversy about the Bay of Pigs and what Kennedy did or didn't promise, so it was nice to get an objective view. Rasenberger did an excellent job depicting the hopeless state of the invading brigade, and I found myself cheering their early successes (even though I knew they wouldn't succeed in the end). But, what was really pleasing was the way he put the whole situation in context. In may ways Kennedy found himself in an impossible situation. Success could very well have incurred the wrath of the Soviet Union and plummeted the world into a nuclear war; meanwhile, failure had a direct impact on US overseas aggression, particularly it's policy toward Vietnam. In the end, I think the take away was one of shared blame among all parties, but also the realization that, perhaps, things worked out for the best.


Book 2 of my 2012 Non-Fiction goal of 30. So far, I'm really enjoying the journey. Next up will either be Isherwood on Writing or Steve Jobs.

If you liked this, make sure to follow me on Goodreads for more reviews!

[Megan Cassella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rasenberger was a newspaper journalist before he started writing longer novels, and the amount of shoe-leather reporting and old-fashioned interviewing he did for this book shines through. The book is stellar: entertaining, fast-paced, unbelievably thorough. He quotes everything from Schlesinger's biography to The New York Times headlines to the diary entries of men on the ships heading into the Bay of Pigs. And by interspersing the timeline of events leading up to the invasion in a larger context familiar to the reader — man's first trip to the moon, for example, and Nixon and JFK's first televised presidential debate — the narrative becomes more understandable, more enlightening.

Points off for dragging, just a bit, in some parts, and for sometimes being too sensationalistic that the book feels like fiction. But if all history books were written this way, I'd know a lot more about the past.

[John Behle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impressive and touching. We all know a little bit about this debacle of American history. Usually we just know it was "bad." Jim Rasenberger's oh-so-gripping writing brings this saga to life.

With Rasenberger's deft details and Bob Walter's artistic narration, this audiobook propelled me to look forward to listening. This work has it all. Human psychology and politics, a tender look back to the mid-20th century and even trigger pulling military battlefield action.

The chronological style and scalpel sharp personality glimpses drive the heart breaking events home with a velvet sledgehammer.

Yes, the Bay of Pigs invasion was bad. More than just bad, this book exposes the grave danger of group think decision making.

[Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read a lot of books regarding the Bay of Pigs. It's my goal to thoroughly educate myself on this failed operation.

I gave this book three stars because I noticed a lack of detail in regard to Zapata. I have read elsewhere that Zapata was so occupied by swamps and jungles, that operatives had to train how to parachute in hotel rooms (in various locations). The very notion of that type of training suggests just how ludicrous it was for Operation Trinidad to be disregarded.

Overall, I did find aspects of this book to be helpful. I very much appreciated the photographs that are provided. That one photograph of Fidel and Che walking side by side is a rare photograph to behold for sure.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a number of long detailed reviews of this book - many by Americans and many who are deeply involved in seeing the Bay of Pigs and then the assassination of president Kennedy and his brother as deeply linked and part of a deep conspiracy that has ruled their country since then or maybe since forever - the fact is as a non-American I do not have either the deep emotional investment in this subject nor do I look to conspiracies to explain what happens. This book is excellent because for those who do not know, or do not already have preconceived opinions, this book will tell you most of what you need to know about the Bay of Pigs disaster. The more you read about the sheer incompetence of the CIA's planning, their inability to honestly or accurately brief the President about what the plan could achieve and what it would need in terms of resources, the more realise why the 'invasion' failed.

It is worth comparing the position of Churchill in WWII when it came to military operations - as Prime Minister he was responsible for giving the go-head for many military operations, he also dreamt up a number, but if the military disagreed with him they would fight him tooth and nail. He could still insist, but if they really disagreed with him the military would resign or at the very least make sure that their disagreements were on the record and in most cases everyone knew that meant that they would be sure to be common knowledge amongst politicians, MPs, civil servants, etc. There would be no way Churchill could walk away from or shift responsibility if things went wrong.

But in the case of the Bay of Pigs this was not a military action, neither in conception, planning or on the day. It was a CIA creation and, when they briefed the president and he changed his mind or changed things, they ducked issues, they did not say to him bluntly if you do this then this will result.

The CIA were amateurs when it came to military planning - in fact the CIA were amateurish in almost every way and that was not in an inspiring lets-do-and-mend way and use minimal resources and lots of cleverness to get things done. No it was not in any good way - but in a ridiculous way - President Kennedy suffered because he allowed himself to be swayed by the 'myth' of the CIA - we are all still being fooled by the myths about Dulles and Angleton and the rest of that shower of mediocrities - because strip away the overwhelming superiority that the CIA had in resources and they would not have been able to steal an apple from a fruit stall or avoid paying a cheque in a restaurant. Despite the boasts about the CIA it is well to remember that back then it was the same organization that in 1989 didn't see the Berlin wall coming down or the collapse of the Soviet Union. This was the great spy organization that didn't have any operatives in Cuba, had no idea what was going on in general and most certainly knew nothing about the area around the Bay of Pigs. Certainly had no idea how ordinary Cubans there, or anywhere in Cuba would react, certainly not how they thought. I doubt if many in the CIA who organized the Bay of Pigs had any Spanish beyond an ability to buy a drink or a whore? Certainly language skills were not thought important in battling the Russians - Angleton, like Dulles and so many who created the campaigns against the Soviet Union, spoke no Russian, knew nothing of the country or its history. Their ignorance of Eastern Europe was matched by their even greater ignorance of Cuba or any other Latin American country. In addition those who made a mess of organizing the Bay of Pigs were the same people who could not even organize the break-in at the Watergate building.

I heartily recommend this book - but please look at the facts and don't be dazzled by bogud legends or conspiracies.

[David Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a young man in 1977, I lived in Jersey City, NY and came to know many Cuban families that lived in Union City and West New York. Knowing almost nothing about the Bay of Pigs I came to know the feelings of these Cubans and the rancor they held for Kennedy. In the intervening years, I have read biographies of Kennedy, Eisenhower, Castro, and Guevara.

It seemed in all of my reading there has been an ongoing debate over who was responsible for the failed U.S. invasion of Cuba in 1961. The author of this engaging book rejects accusations that the CIA acted as an independent rogue power and instead blames both Eisenhower and Kennedy. But the real culprit is American political culture of the era. The combination of hubris and insecurity, which simply could not tolerate sharing a hemisphere with an insubordinate Cuba.

The early Kennedy White House is depicted as inexperienced yet headstrong, disorganized, driven by excessive pride and self-interest. The author argues that, whether through luck or calculation, the outcome for Kennedy was fortuitous: the failed invasion disposed of the pesky Cuban exiles and avoided the high costs of an American occupation of the island nation. In the aftermath, the Kennedy White House became better organized and brilliantly handled the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Nevertheless, the author asserts, “the best and the brightest” failed to question basic precepts of American interests and power and thus repeated many of the same errors, on a much larger scale, in Vietnam.

[Robert Morrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew it was bad, but I didn't know it was that bad! Not the book---the book is excellent. I'm referring to the disaster known as the Bay of Pigs, a story which Mr. Rasenberger tells extraordinarily well.

This is a sad tale of breakdowns in human communication and purpose that led to the unnecessary sacrifice of hundreds of people who falsely believed in the word of the United States government. Although nearly all of the participants pointed fingers at each other, the author is correct in his analysis that nearly everyone involved bore some responsibility for the catastrophe. This is JFK at his worst as a leader and his best as a human being---though the latter only developed after the full scope of the failure was known. Mr. Rasenberger also credibly ties the emotions generated by the Bay of Pigs to decisions that would lead to both victories (the Missile Crisis) and quagmires (Vietnam).

This is an exciting and well told story, with sprinkles of dark humor in the bargain. The only thing that prevented a 5-star rating were a few chapters between the end of the disaster and the release of the prisoners that pretty much recounted previously-told history. Still, a fine piece of work and an appreciated contribution to the fields of history and human behavior.

[Jacob Harrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Brilliant Disaster was an alright read. It places fair criticism and blame for the failure of the Bay of Pigs on both the Kennedy Administration and the CIA. President Kennedy meddled in a plan at the last possible second that had been set and in the works since the Eisenhower Administration, by reducing the number of jets being flown and cancelling the second wave of air strikes he doomed the Cuban brigade almost instantly. The CIA and Joint Chiefs did not tell Kennedy that without these air strikes the operation had zero chance of succeeding. Even with the air strikes questions still remain as to the viability of the Cuban brigade without American support or popular uprisings in Cuba. There are a lot of “what if’s” in this event, but the only thing certain is that it failed.

The book was probably about 100 pages too long, it should have ended shortly after the invasion was over with an epilogue explaining the release of the Cuban brigade by Kennedy. Instead the book goes on up through the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it does not provide much analysis or description of the 1962 event. We all know the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis are linked events, but the author glosses over the Missile Crisis, and if you’re going to do that you should just leave it out altogether.

[R_ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. I listened to the audible version (well narrated by the way) and I found myself drawn back to it over and over even though I knew the outcome. I didn't know the details however -- and they were fascinating and well written. I liked the author's nuanced presentation of the history involved. He didn't heap blame on any one person or entity although certainly there were lots of mistakes made by lots of people. Rather, the suggestion I took from this book was that this was probably a well-intentioned operation that was, for various reasons, highly flawed in its execution. And there was heroism, too, that seems to be largely forgotten about. I was born in 1962, right before the so called "Cuban Missile Crisis". I grew up hearing about this but never really understanding how much it was related to the "Bay of Pigs" incident. It seems to me that we lionize JFK for the way he handled the missile crisis, but forget how his bungling of the Bay of Pigs might have caused it. And then there was Vietnam, Watergate, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan...we just don't learn.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always felt under-informed about the Bay of Pigs disaster that resulted in the loss of so many lives. The invasion has a lot to say about the way that the United States treats those not born in their country. The Cuban invaders were taken in by the Americans and led to believe that they were assured of victory. It was fascinating to see how the CIA works and how they can discuss assassination so coolly and topple states with little reservation for the people living in them, so long as they are preventing the spread of Communism.

I'd never realised just how spectacularly America messed up in the invasion and The Brilliant Disaster provided a fair view of all the decisions made concerning Cuba and the people who made them, all extremely intellectual.

A great read on this subject. I found it engaging and well-written.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

A superb read. Revisionist in its admirable balance. Nobody comes off as a pure villain or pure hero. Everyone screwed up, but more to the point, Rasenberger makes a strong case that this operation was doomed no matter who did what. The goat here was the arrogance, and the disingenuous nature, of a U.S. foreign policy that tried to walk several thin lines — criticizing aggression by opponents while practicing the same, but with a delusional sense of stealth that was doomed to fail. Rasenberger also logically connects the Bay of Pigs to future U.S. screwups. But the real strength of this book is its intimacy and its dramatic pace. It has the narrative of a good spy thriller. Highly recommended.

[Jeff Tanner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really one of the best books on the Bay of Pigs disaster. Most are written from a predetermined perspective of where blame resides and usually in one camp or the other. This author takes an overarching view and refers to verifiable sources and records to display what actually happened. Where evidence does not exist or the sources reliability is questionable, he says so.

It is clear that this was a disaster that should never have happened, yet so few have learned the lessons of groupthink and the arrogance of humanity. I finished this frankly disgusted with our government. It would be nice to believe that these types of things never happened again, but one only needs to to review the period since then to know it happens far too often.

[Jim Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

True confessions: I usually find history books to be, um, a tad dry. This one, however, was a fast-paced, logically structured, fascinating "thriller." Many historical details include surprising sidelights, stunning (to me, at least) revelations and deep insights into the characters, along with the riveting main story.

The Bay of Pigs incident took place while I was a junior on high school, otherwise occupied, and it has taken full retirement and the well-written book to satisfy my 50-year-long curiosity. I am extremely pleased with finally discovering the complete story.

[Doug Norton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book again, this time with my book club. One of the dust jacket blurbs Is “Reads more like a thriller than a history book. –The Daily Beast.” I agree and, as it was upon first reading, it is again an inspiration for character dimensions and plot twists as I write my second thriller. It has courage and cowardice, hubris and humility, passion and indifference, plot twists—all depicted in deft, crisp prose. I love to read twentieth century history, both nonfiction and historical fiction. This book is the most well-thumbed and heavily annotated on my bookshelf.

[Keaton Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a lot of thoughts about the contents of this book, and I hope I will be forgiven if I ramble and meander a bit in this review.

Man, what even was the 1960's? What a decade of madness and paranoia. Reading Jim Rasenberger's retelling of the Bay of Pigs event was both thrilling and intriguing. This narrative even moreso shaped how I view the communications, scheming, ideologies and clashes of agendas that exist within our government, especially around regime changes. Combine this with the aura of suspicion and secrecy that the Cold War shrouded the world in, and it makes for some incredible events. Here, Rasenberger centers his concentration around the catastrophe which was the Bay of Pigs.

The main characters in this story consists of some of the heaviest hitters in 20th century history. We have the charmed John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert, and his wife Jaqueline. We have Eisenhower and Nixon. Across the pond we get Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, two boogeymen to 20th century U.S. Presidents. And the terrifying Nikita Khrushchev, head of a Soviet Union locked in a bitter nuclear staring contest with the United States. A clash of ideologies make for Soviet Invasions in Hungary, Czechoslavakia, and later Afghanistan. The contagion of Communism sparks proxy wars in the Koreas, Laos, Vietnam, to name a few. Not to mention a tug of war over Berlin in Germany, and a fevered race to space. The decision-making that goes into these events are blistered with tension, confusion, projection and covert wackiness that makes for an intensely entertaining time period.

Then there is Cuba. To summarize Rathenberger's version of events: a militaristic Fidel Castro overthrows a corrupt Prime Minister in Cuba by the name of Fulgencio Batista, in the late 1950's. While corrupt, Batista had good relationship with then U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a fact that causes the U.S. government to sour on Castro from the beginning. The young Castro tries to make a good first impression with the U.S, even traveling to NY to meet government leaders and tour the city. Eisenhower snubs meeting Castro to play golf, and instead send his VP Richard Nixon to entertain the revolutionary. Castro suspects his unpopularity with the U.S. government, though New Yorkers flock to him everywhere he goes. He finally gets fed up with Nixon and other government members when they repeatedly press him about his opinion on Communism. Fidel leaves America with a bad taste about its leaders.

Fast forward to early 1960 where Castro begins relations with the Soviet Union. Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev suspects that Cuba and America are in troubled diplomatic waters, and decides to taunt the U.S. by showing friendliness towards Castro and his lieutenants, including the popular Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. This newfound relationship irks Eisenhower, and he begins plans on how to remove Castro from power covertly. Plans that at points even include the Mafia. Eisenhower in conduct with the C.I.A, formulate a plan to raise an organic Cuban expeditionary force made up of anti-Castro rebels, train them in Central America with American special ops, equip them with American weapons and aircraft, and help them launch an Invasion on Cuba. The problem here is that in 1960, Eisenhower was in his last year in office, and his Vice President Nixon was locked in a tight race with a young, popular, upstart Democratic Nominee in John F. Kennedy. For a smooth transition of this plan to work, Nixon would need to win the Presidency in 1961. He does not.

The crux of the problems of the Bay of Pigs Invasion occur at the start when Kennedy inherits this operation from Eisenhower, an operation scheduled to go down in April merely 3 months into Kennedy's Presidency. As CIA directors, and Pentagon officials scramble to catch Kennedy up to speed, I don't believe Kennedy himself, or his cabinet members, really ever understand the parameters of the operation. The CIA under Eisenhower had planned a daytime operation meant to land the Cuban rebels on the beaches with a show of force consisting of disguised American airpower, surprising and shocking Castro's forces, and stirring up the Cubans to rise up and rebel against Castro's administration. Kennedy never really seems to grasp the intent of this operation, and begins changing the plans to fit his view. He wants a covert nighttime infiltration, with limited airpower, to secretly grow the uprising from within. From the start he, and the CIA he inherited become locked in a power struggle over how the operation is to unfold. And there isn't really enough time to iron it all out.

Questions arise out of reading this book that I find baffling, and why this era is so interesting. Why was the CIA and Eisenhower so sure that the Cubans would rise up against Castro, a notion Castro had nipped in the bud anyway by jailing possible dissenters? Why didn't Kennedy just cancel the operation altogether, a plan he never truly felt good about? Why didn't the U.S. see that every time they snubbed Castro, they pushed him closer to the Soviet Union and to Communism? A fear that would eventually manifest itself due to U.S. paranoia.

The Brilliant Disaster is an intense day-by-day, play-by-play narrative that will leave you wanting to learn more about the Cold War. Jim Rasenberger is a fantastic storyteller, and presents an easy to read page turner on an amazing era of politics and ideology. Pair this with Steve Coll's Ghost Wars, and treat yourself to an intense ride on a political landscape that still mystifies us even today.

[alissa skovira · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing writer. This is about one of the most complicated episodes in Cold War history, but Rasengerger breaks it down so well. Who is at fault for the Bay of Pigs fiasco? Camelot doesn't appear quite as glamorous in this telling. Our young "king" seems to have lost his nerve however briefly, and so many young men died horrible deaths on Cuban beaches and in the swamps. I understand now how the puzzle fits together and how we began a very real and equally disastrous plunge into Vietnam.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew almost literally nothing about the Bay of Pigs before I read this book, and I feel like Jim Rasenberger gave me an excellent understanding of how the US government got into the Bay of Pigs and the effects it had on our country. For the amount of information packed into the book, it was easy to read and comprehend.

[Richard Starks · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Bay of Pigs 'incident' has all the hallmarks of a great story, and this author's telling takes full advantage of that fact. Extremely readable and highly enjoyable, it brings to life the main characters in a way that allows us to see the action through their eyes. This is how history should be written.

[Rodrigo Hinojosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing. I laughed, I cried... I cried mostly. The story is so gripping and complete, it's definitely one of the best books I've ever read and probably the best non-fiction book I've ever read. I loved every single word of it. Everyone who has an interest in the history of Latin America and the US should read this book. It's very balanced and well documented. You won't regret it.

[Connie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars! A very well written and researched book which focuses primarily on the Bay of Pigs invasion. I would probably have never read this if my book group had not chosen it for April’s book. I knew of many of the major characters but was surprised to find there was much I did not know and had never heard.
Highly recommended!

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic, fast, and fair account of the failed CIA-organized invasion of Cuba. Who's to blame, the CIA or Kennedy? There's enough blame for both, but I think Kennedy gets the edge. The minute he canceled the air strikes, the invasion was doomed to fail.

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good version about the Bay of Pigs invastion/disaster. Unlike other books on the subject (especially those written by people in the Kennedy administration), this author puts the blame on everyone involved, including the president.