The Cuban Missile Crisis may have lasted only thirteen days, but as revealed in this scintillating popular history, it was just one battle in a decades-long secret war that was fought in the island nations of the Caribbean. The US and the USSR thought they could use Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic as puppets in their political games throughout the 50s and 60s. What neither bargained on was that their puppets would come to life. Red Heat is the gripping story of the intrigues and blunders of the superpowers -- and the men, armed with nothing more than words and ruthlessness, who would rise to become the leaders of their nations: in Cuba, the charismatic Fidel Castro, his mysterious brother Raúl, and the ideologue Che Guevara; in the Dominican Republic, the capricious psychopath Rafael Trujillo; in Haiti, François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, a buttoned-down doctor with interests in Vodou, embezzlement, and torture. With extraordinary wit, insight, and narrative verve, von Tunzelmann brilliantly interweaves the stories of these five rivals and accomplices from the beginning of the Cold War and crafts a vibrant panorama of the Caribbean during a dangerous era of international politics that has unmistakable resonance today.