Welcome to Litsy!

Hilariously entertaining read about the Soviet leader's ultimately doomed attempt to 'thaw' out the Cold War in 1959 by inviting VP Nixon to Moscow and then visiting the US a few months later. Khrushchev (abbreviated to K in newspaper headlines) was a larger-than-life figure and journalist Peter Carlson captures him in all his buffoonish glory. This is history lite but also history at its most entertaining & surreal. Fact stranger than fiction.

This one falls in the category of sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. In 1959, Khruschchev visited the US with his family and a delegation -- and it was probably one of the most surreal road trips of all times. Diplomatic snafus, dry cleaning tours, Hollywood starlets, reporters climbing all over fixtures in grocery stores for a good picture -the whole trip was both comic and bizarre. Carlson does a good job depicting the bizarre trip👇

"I don't want anyone to think I am trying to interfere in your elections " -- Kruschev, 1959, joking that he didn't want to praise the mayor of San Francisco too lavishly while he was running for re-election.

An intriguing look at Khrushchev, Eisenhower, Nixon, and the cold war as it played out in a (American) cross country trip in 1959.

Busted....

Khrushchev knew in the 50's what many of us are figuring out today.

J Edgar Hoover and the FBI kept the Communist party in America alive with all of the dues spies were paying...

My first book for the readathon. Recommended by #bookriot, loved by my husband, on the pile by my bed for months.