K Blows Top: A Cold War Comic Interlude Starring Nikita Khrushchev, America's Most Unlikely Tourist by Peter Carlson

From the Publisher

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.

The Washington Post - Jacob Heilbrunn

Carlson, a former feature writer for The Washington Post, confesses to being obsessed with Khrushchev's peregrinations ever since first reading old newspaper clips about them several decades ago as a rewrite man at People magazine. Since then, Carlson seems to have sought and discovered every piece of arcana associated with the Soviet leader's American sojourn. A deft and amusing writer, Carlson does a marvelous job of recounting it.

Publishers Weekly

Although Punch magazine famously commented on the humor of Nikita Khrushchev's desire to visit Disneyland during his 1959 trip to America, Carlson a former writer for the Washington Post, can still mine the tour with hilarious results, due in equal parts to Khrushchev's outsized provocateur personality and the bizarre and thoroughly American reaction to his visit. Numerous secondary players provide comic support: then vice president Richard Nixon's fixations on mano a mano debates with the quicksilver premier; Boston Brahmin and U.N. ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Khrushchev's tour guide, who dutifully filed daily analysis of Khrushchev's public tantrums; popular gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, who in a noteworthy example of bad taste attacked Mrs. Khrushchev's attire. A host of other American icons also make appearances: among them Herbert Hoover, Marilyn Monroe, Shirley MacLaine and Frank Sinatra. Although Carlson's focuses on the comic, there are insights into Khrushchev's personality, many provided by his son Sergei, now a respected professor at Brown University, illuminating the method in Khrushchev's madness. All in all, in Carson's hands the cold war is a surprisingly laughing matter. (June)

Ed Goedeken - Library Journal

At a time when the Cold War was at its chilliest, an amazing thing happened: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, the energetic and unpredictable leader of America's most hated enemy, took a tour across the breadth of America in summer 1959. Followed by a gaggle of press, curious spectators, and nervous government security forces, the sometimes amiable, sometimes hilarious, and sometimes maddening Khrushchev held the limelight for ten days as he sampled American culture and cuisine while extolling the advantages of his Communist homeland. Carlson, who has spent his career at various journalistic posts, including the Washington Post, has crafted an exceedingly entertaining and detailed history of this momentous event. Pouring over hundreds of newspaper clippings as well as the most significant published memoirs and secondary sources, he brings a refreshing liveliness to the episode and the era. For anyone interested in this remarkable moment in the long history of U.S.-Soviet relations, Carlson's book is a treat! For most collections.

Kirkus Reviews

A high-spirited, often hilarious account of a forgotten moment in Cold War history. It began as something of a dare, as if the last occupant of the White House had invited Saddam Hussein to visit Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon and then debate the superiority of American over Ba'athist culture. In this instance, following the so-called Kitchen Debate in Moscow, Nikita Khrushchev set out on a road show to beat the capitalists at their own game, proving that the Soviets knew all about refrigerators, ICBMs and hot dogs. Former Washington Post reporter Carlson writes that Khrushchev's back-and-forth wanderings across the country in 1959 were quite bizarre, drawing many protests but some admiration. Among those in the former camp was Marilyn Monroe, who thought the Russian leader "was fat and ugly and had warts on his face and he growled...Who would want to be a Communist with a president like that?" Walt Disney refused him admission to Disneyland, and the American Dental Association refused to make room for him when he arrived in New York. A less volatile ruler might have brushed such things aside, but Khrushchev, goaded by Richard Nixon, was in a fighting mood, clearly wanting to impress upon the American people the fact that his finger was on the button that could launch thermonuclear doomsday. Carlson writes both vividly and sardonically of Khrushchev's tour, with its mundane and strange moments alike, among the latter a wonderful moment when the San Francisco Beats erected a sign to greet "Big Red" with the words, "Welcome to San Francisco, Noel Coward!" Fortunately, given all the opportunities to tick Khrushchev off beyond repair, Americans behaved themselves. A fast-paced work ofpolitical history, peppered with references to Shirley MacLaine's knickers, Iowa corn, Dwight Eisenhower's frown, Nina Khrushchev's sidelong glances at Frank Sinatra and all the other makings of mutually assured destruction. Agent: Scott Mendel/Mendel Media Group

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