In Three Nights in Havana and Our Man in Tehran, author and historian Robert Wright brings to life two key events that shaped Canada’s diplomatic psyche and forever changed how Canada was viewed by the rest of the world.

On January 26, 1976, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau became the first leader of a NATO country to visit Cuba since the crippling 1960 American economic embargo. Three Nights in Havana is a fascinating portrait of an unusual relationship between two enigmatic world leaders, Pierre Trudeau and Fidel Castro. In a revealing look at both leaders’ personalities and political ideologies, Wright shows how these two towering figures—despite their official positions as allies of rival empires—determinedly refused to exist merely as handmaidens to the United States and forged a long-lasting relationship.

The world watched with fear in November 1979 when Iranian students infiltrated and occupied the American embassy in Tehran. As the city exploded in a fury of revolution, few knew about the six American embassy staff who had escaped into hiding. In Our Man in Tehran, Robert Wright tells the story behind a major historical flashpoint, a story of cloak-and-dagger intrigue, the stuff of John le Carré and Frederick Forsyth made real.

Robert Wright, Ph.D., is a professor of history at Trent University, specializing in foreign policy. He is the author of the national bestseller Three Nights In Havana, which won the 2008 Canadian Authors’ Association’s Lela Common Award for Canadian History and is currently being made into a feature documentary. He resides in Toronto with his wife and children. Visit him at http://www.robertwright.ca/.

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