Obama's Back Channel to Cuba: Events Leading to Historic Breakthrough Revealed in Updated Book

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Back Channel to Cuba
The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana
By William M. LeoGrande
and Peter Kornbluh

Updated paperback edition,
with a new epilogue

Diplomacia encubierta con Cuba. Historia de las negociaciones secretas entre Washington y La Habana
LeoGrande, William M.
y Peter Kornbluh
FONDO DE CULTURA ECONÓMICA (FCE)

Washington, DC, December 18, 2015 - On the first anniversary of the historic breakthrough in U.S.-Cuban relations, the National Security Archive announced that the book, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana, has been released in Spanish under the title, Diplomacia Encubierta con Cuba: Historia de las Negociaciones Secretas Entre Washington y La Habana. The book was published last week in Mexico by Fondo de Cultura y Economica.

The Spanish edition follows the November publication by the University of North Carolina press of the updated, paperback edition of the book, written by Archive Cuba Documentation Project Director Peter Kornbluh and American University Professor William M. LeoGrande. The revised edition contains a comprehensive, new, 15,000 word epilogue revealing how the Obama administration and the government of Raul Castro secretly negotiated a historic détente between the two nations, and bringing the history of back channel diplomacy through to the raising of the U.S. flag over the Embassy in Havana.

According to Kornbluh, "The story of back channel diplomacy between Washington and Havana, which dates all the way back to the Kennedy era, is now complete."

As a timely and immediately relevant history, Back Channel to Cuba has received significant acclaim. Last year, the editors at Foreign Affairs called it an "exhaustive and masterful diplomatic history" and picked it as a "best book of the year." On November 19, 2015, in a ceremony in the Benjamin Franklin room of the Department of State, the American Academy of Diplomacy gave the book the Douglas Dillon award for best diplomatic history.

"Like a good bottle of aged rum, this book should be sipped without hurry and with frequent pauses," Harvard University professor Jorge Dominguez wrote in the prologue to the Spanish edition, "savoring not only the aroma of great decisions but also taking in the ridiculous and the hilarious, and appreciating diplomacy as a form of art."