K Blows Top: Difference between revisions

K Blows Top (2009) is a book by Peter Carlson published by PublicAffairs describing the 1959 visit of Nikita Khrushchev to the United States. Khrushchev's visit took him to New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Iowa, Pittsburgh, and Washington, DC, and included visits to Twentieth Century Fox, the Mark Hopkins Hotel, an Iowa farm, a Pittsburgh steel mill, and Camp David.

Highlights also including meeting Shirley MacLaine and Frank Sinatra on the set of Can-Can, visiting a Quality Foods supermarket in San Francisco, and meeting Harry Bridges, fiery labor leader.

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.

Douglas Brinkley, professor of history, Rice University

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 has to make this into a movie. I insist!

Christopher Buckley

This book recreates in vivid detail one of the most astonishing figures in our recent history. The Communist leader's storming of America can be enjoyed by everyone, but especially those with memories of that singular episode in the winding down of the Cold War.

Daniel Schorr, National Public Radio