During the presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, the United States and the USSR acted out the world's tensions in the Caribbean, using Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic as puppets. What neither superpower bargained on was that their puppets would come to life. Red Heat tells the gripping story of the men responsible for this rude surprise, including, from Cuba, the charismatic Fidel Castro and his mysterious brother Raúl; from Argentina, the ideologue Che Guevara; from the Dominican Republic, the capricious psychopath Rafael Trujillo; and from Haiti, François 'Papa Doc' Duvalier, a buttoned-down doctor with interests in Vodou, embezzlement, and torture.

How did this handful of men, armed with little but words and ruthlessness, capture the world's attention during the 1950s and 60s? Alex von Tunzelmann shows her storytelling prowess yet again in a riveting narrative of clashing ideologies, the politics of fear, the machinations of superpowers, and — above all — the brazen daring of the mavericks who took them on.

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"Action-packed and entertaining . . . unimaginably rich in detail, scholarship, and humanity."
—Winnipeg Free Press
 
"A page-turning record of the madness seizing the Caribbean at the Cold War's zenith. . . . Von Tunzelmann artfully mixes the ambitions, love lives, drug use, grievances, deceptions and miscalculations of these and a host of lesser characters with grand historical themes... A remarkably gripping popular history."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

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Visit Alex von Tunzelmann's website.

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ALEX VON TUNZELMANN is the author of Indian Summer. She was educated at Oxford and has written for the Guardian, the New York Times, and the Daily Beast. She has also contributed research to books as diverse as The Political Animal by Jeremy Paxman and Not on the Label by Felicity Lawrence.

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