newyorker:

Jon Lee Anderson explores the history behind Obama’s handshake with Raúl Castro: http://nyr.kr/1e5BkzX

“Obama himself is the benefactor of an epic political struggle that took place a generation and more ago, in which Mandela may have had a more directly positive role than some of the men who previously occupied the White House. Paradoxically, given the constraints remaining in their own country, the Castro brothers played a role, too.”

Photograph: Feliberto Carrie/Gamma/Getty

An interesting history lesson. This is the type of article I love the New Yorker for.