In January 1959, the Cuban Revolution took the world by surprise. Soon the island was flooded with foreign journalists, students, and intellectuals, all determined to see the unfolding social experiment for themselves.

One of these visitors was the Columbia University sociologist C. Wright Mills, author of classic studies of the postwar American class structure such as White Collar and The Power Elite. For two weeks in August 1960 — including a three-day stint traveling with Fidel Castro — Mills traversed the island nation. He was there with a purpose: to write a book that would give voice to the Cuban revolutionaries.

The result was Listen, Yankee, one of the period’s most influential polemics. Published in November 1960, the book became an overnight sensation, quickly selling over four hundred thousand copies in the US alone. By the time Mills died less than two years later, he was receiving nearly ten letters a day from readers all over the world, many asking, “How can you help me get to Cuba so I can help Fidel?”