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K Blows Top

A Cold War Comic Interlude Starring Nikita Khrushchev, America's Most Unlikely Tourist

K Blows Top Open the full-size image

Contributors

By Peter Carlson

Formats and Prices

Price

$10.99

Price

$13.99 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. ebook $10.99 $13.99 CAD
  2. Trade Paperback $21.99 $28.99 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around June 2, 2009. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

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Khrushchev’s 1959 trip across America was one of the strangest exercises in international diplomacy ever conducted. 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.

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 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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  • Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History and Baker Institute Fellow at Rice University
    "What a joy it was to read Peter Carlson's K Blows Top. With vivid detail, crisp language, subtle wit, and admirable new research, Carlson recounts Khrushchev's notorious bungling around America in 1959. A truly fine piece of writing and Cold War scholarship."Christopher Buckley, author of Thank You for Smoking and Supreme Courtship
    “Peter Carlson's K Blows Top is an utterly hilarious and un-putdown-able story about one of the strangest episodes of the Cold War -- Khrushchev's 1959 visit to the U.S. Someone absolutely has to make this into a movie. I insist!”The Daily Beast, from Christopher Buckley, author of Thank you for Smoking and

On Sale
Jun 2, 2009
Page Count
352 pages
Publisher
PublicAffairs
ISBN-13
9780786741564

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Peter Carlson

About the Author

Peter Carlson is the author of K Blows Top, which has been optioned into a feature film. For many years, he was a reporter and columnist for the Washington Post. He has also written for Smithsonian magazine, American History, and the Huffington Post. He lives in Rockville, MD.

Learn more about this author