Acknowledgments
I am indebted to many people for their support and guidance during the many years that I have been researching and writing this book. First, I owe an enormous debt to Arne Westad—my graduate teacher, doctoral supervisor, mentor, and friend. His inspiration, warm encouragement, energy, and enthusiasm for history and learning have been invaluable to me. As a student and now a lecturer at the London School of Economics (LSE), I have also been incredibly fortunate to benefit from the exciting intellectual, research, and teaching environment of the International History Department, the LSE’s Centre for Diplomacy and Strategy, LSE IDEAS, Arne Westad’s Wednesday afternoon Cold War Research Seminar, and the LSE’s Latin America Research Seminar. Within this context, my particular thanks go to Nigel Ashton, Antony Best, Jeff Byrne, Steve Casey, Vesselin Dimitrov, Arne Hofmann, Artemy Kalinovsky, Ed Packard, George Philip, Kristina Spohr-Readman, Thomas Field, Victor Figueroa Clark, and Erica Wald, all of whom at one point or another read earlier portions of the book and offered helpful comments. I am also enormously grateful to Anita Prazmowska for helping me locate Polish documents that are referred to in this book while on sabbatical and then for spending hours translating them for me over coffee and baklava. The same goes for my former graduate student at the LSE, Laura Wiesen, who translated East German materials for me with great enthusiasm and professionalism. Without a doubt, the contents of this book are far richer as a result of the support and inspiration that the LSE has provided me with since I first arrived there as a rather nervous graduate student in 2001.
Beyond the LSE, I am profoundly grateful to Piero Gleijeses and to Jim Hershberg, who took the time to read the manuscript version of the book. Not only did they express interest and faith in the project, but they also offered detailed comments and insightful suggestions, which I have done my best to incorporate into the final version. Alfredo Riquelme, Joaquín Fermandois, and Fernando Purcell at the Pontificia Universidad Católica (PUC) in Chile have also been incredibly supportive. For their advice and interest in my research, their collaboration in the LSE IDEAS Latin America International Affairs Programme, and their invitation to Chile during the spring of 2010, my thanks. Over the course of my research trips to Chile, I have also been warmly welcomed at Chile’s Foreign Ministry Archives and assisted by its staff. My thanks therefore go to those who helped make my visits there so fruitful, and particularly to the archive’s director, Carmen Gloria Duhart. In Cuba, the process of research is as complicated as it is exciting, and it would have been far more daunting without the support and guidance of Antoni Kapcia, Hal Klepak, and members of the Cuba Research Forum based at the University of Nottingham and the University of Havana. For their help in obtaining the right visa, introducing me to the right people, and providing a welcoming environment to discuss research in Cuba, I am greatly indebted. In Havana, my thanks go to Jorge Hernández and Luis René Fernández at the Centro de Estudios Sobre los Estados Unidos at the University of Havana, the staff at Casa Memorial Salvador Allende, and Carlos Alzugaray at the Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales. I am also grateful to others working on Latin American and U.S. history with whom I have enjoyed stimulating conversations and from whom I have received invaluable feedback and support, not least Andrew Preston, Jim Siekmeier, Vanni Pettina, Andy Kirkendall, Alessandro Santoni, Olga Ulianova, Eugenia Palieraki, Matias Spektor, Hal Brands, Andy Scott, and Kristian Gustafson. Over the years, I have also been pushed forward by the many insightful comments and questions about my research at various conferences and seminars in the United Kingdom, Chile, Italy, France, and
Learning to Kill: Stories