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K Blows Top
K Blows Top: A Cold War Comic Interlude Starring Nikita Khrushchev, America's Most Unlikely Tourist | Peter Carlson
10 posts | 5 read | 1 reading | 4 to read
Khrushchev's 1959 trip across America was one of the strangest exercises in international diplomacy ever conducted - ''a surreal extravaganza, '' as historian John Lewis Gaddis called it. Khrushchev told jokes, threw tantrums, sparked a riot in a San Francisco supermarket, wowed the coeds in a home economics class in Iowa, and ogled Shirley MacLaine as she filmed a dance scene in Can-Can. He befriended and offended a cast of characters including Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon, Eleanor Roosevelt, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marilyn Monroe. Published for the fiftieth anniversary of the trip, K Blows Top is a work of history that reads like a Vonnegut novel. This cantankerous communist's road trip took place against the backdrop of the fifties in capitalist America, with the shadow of the hydrogen bomb hanging over his visit like the Sword of Damocles. As Khrushchev kept reminding people, he was a hot-tempered man who possessed the power to incinerate America.
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review
RamsFan1963
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Mehso-so

45/150 This was an interesting moment in American history, when the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev visited the United States, toured the country, was welcomed by Hollywood stars and generally treated like a ally. The book is a bit repetitive, Khrushchev acts the buffoon, then loses his temper and throws a tantrum, apologizes and then it starts again at the next location visited. 3 ⭐⭐⭐💫

DieAReader 🥳🥳🥳 7mo
Andrew65 Well done 👏👏👏 7mo
54 likes3 comments
review
IftyZaidi
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Pickpick

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.

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lauralovesbooks1
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Pickpick

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👇

lauralovesbooks1 along with giving the reader insight into the cold war and how close we came to the brink. 7y
15 likes1 stack add1 comment
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lauralovesbooks1
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"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.

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Nebklvr
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Pickpick

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

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Nebklvr
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Busted....

she_barks I read this book when it first came out and loved it! 8y
Nebklvr @she_barks Just heard about it recently. Did not even know K had toured US! 8y
17 likes1 stack add2 comments
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Nebklvr
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Khrushchev knew in the 50's what many of us are figuring out today.

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

Marchpane Oh the irony... 8y
Texreader Wow. 8y
Nebklvr @Marchpane Exactly 8y
22 likes1 stack add3 comments
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Nebklvr
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20 likes1 stack add
blurb
KathleenLoucks
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My first book for the readathon. Recommended by #bookriot, loved by my husband, on the pile by my bed for months.

2 likes1 stack add