The words "TARGET AMERICA" are handwritten across the top of a laminated map of the Western Hemisphere. Three concentric circles drawn on the map depict the potential ranges of ballistic missiles fired from Cuba. The outermost band encompasses nearly all the continental United States.
On a recent morning, 18 Yale undergraduates gathered inside the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library pondered the map, which is from the archives of Sherman Kent, a longtime Yale history professor who pioneered the CIA's intelligence-analysis methods during his 17 years of Cold War service with the agency.
The students, who are enrolled in "Historical Approaches to Global Affairs," an undergraduate seminar taught by historian David Engerman, viewed a variety of other archival records associated with the rise of the Nuclear Age in the Yale Library's collections.
