In an enthralling blend of travel literature and history, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro provides an insightful portrait of a mesmerizing place. Building on the in-depth exploration of Cuba's society, culture, and politics that formed part of his recent book, Island People: The Caribbean and the World, Jelly-Schapiro adds new material covering the changes that followed the death of Fidel Castro. The result is a concise and up-to-date overview of Cuba's past and present and its enduring grip on the world’s imagination.
Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, this work takes a look at Cuban history seen through the collection of Ramiro Fernandez, the world's largest archive of Cuban photos and ephemera.
Vintage photos from one of the largest archives of Cuban photography in the world capture the island’s history. The enduring fascination of Cuba intensifies as the island once again becomes a seductive travel destination. From Ramiro Fernández, whose collection of Cuban photography and ephemera is one of the largest outside of the island nation, comes a dazzling array of images of Cuban life, lifestyle, glamour, customs, and struggle from the nineteenth century to the Revolution. From the earliest daguerreotypes to glamorous shots of movie stars, the country’s history is represented by a rich spectrum of personalities: race-car driving aristocrats, sultry showgirls, gangsters, everyday folk, and revolutionaries who would soon transform the nation. Rare images are showcased: a portrait of Castro as a schoolboy, a bare-chested Che Guevara, and Heinz Lüning, the only Nazi spy executed in Latin America during World War II (and the unwitting inspiration for Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana). With nearly 300 exceptional images and a foreword and poetry by Richard Blanco, the poet selected for President Obama's second inauguration, this is a multifaceted look at Cuba, then.
Ever since Fidel Castro assumed power in Cuba in 1959, Americans have obsessed about the nation ninety miles south of the Florida Keys. America's fixation on the tropical socialist republic has only grown over the years, fueled in part by successive waves of Cuban immigration and Castro's larger-than-life persona. Cubans are now a major ethnic group in Florida, and the exile community is so powerful that every American president has kowtowed to it. But what do most Americans really know about Cuba itself? In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia Sweig, one of America's leading experts on Cuba and Latin America, presents a concise and remarkably accessible portrait of the small island nation's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years. Yet it is authoritative as well. Following a scene-setting introduction that describes the dynamics unleashed since summer 2006 when Fidel Castro transferred provisional power to his brother Raul, the book looks backward toward Cuba's history since the Spanish American War before shifting to more recent times. Focusing equally on Cuba's role in world affairs and its own social and political transformations, Sweig divides the book chronologically into the pre-Fidel era, the period between the 1959 revolution and the fall of the Soviet Union, the post-Cold War era, and-finally-the looming post-Fidel era. Informative, pithy, and lucidly written, it will serve as the best compact reference on Cuba's internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.
She's been kidnapped and beaten, lives under surveillance, and can only get online—in disguise—at tourist hotspots. She's a blogger, she's a Cuban, and she's a worldwide sensation. Yoani Sánchez is an unusual dissident: no street protests, no attacks on big politicos, no calls for revolution. Rather, she produces a simple diary about what it means to live under the Castro regime: the chronic hunger and the difficulty of shopping; the art of repairing ancient appliances; and the struggles of living under a propaganda machine that pushes deep into public and private life. For these simple acts of truth-telling her life is one of constant threat. But she continues on, refusing to be silenced—a living response to all who have ceased to believe in a future for Cuba.
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN HISTORY “Full of…lively insights and lucid prose” (The Wall Street Journal) an epic, sweeping history of Cuba and its complex ties to the United States—from before the arrival of Columbus to the present day—written by one of the world’s leading historians of Cuba. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, where a momentous revolution had taken power three years earlier. For more than half a century, the stand-off continued—through the tenure of ten American presidents and the fifty-year rule of Fidel Castro. His death in 2016, and the retirement of his brother and successor Raúl Castro in 2021, have spurred questions about the country’s future. Meanwhile, politics in Washington—Barack Obama’s opening to the island, Donald Trump’s reversal of that policy, and the election of Joe Biden—have made the relationship between the two nations a subject of debate once more. Now, award-winning historian Ada Ferrer delivers an “important” (The Guardian) and moving chronicle that demands a new reckoning with both the island’s past and its relationship with the United States. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History provides us with a front-row seat as we witness the evolution of the modern nation, with its dramatic record of conquest and colonization, of slavery and freedom, of independence and revolutions made and unmade. Along the way, Ferrer explores the sometimes surprising, often troubled intimacy between the two countries, documenting not only the influence of the United States on Cuba but also the many ways the island has been a recurring presence in US affairs. This is a story that will give Americans unexpected insights into the history of their own nation and, in so doing, help them imagine a new relationship with Cuba; “readers will close [this] fascinating book with a sense of hope” (The Economist). Filled with rousing stories and characters, and drawing on more than thirty years of research in Cuba, Spain, and the United States—as well as the author’s own extensive travel to the island over the same period—this is a stunning and monumental account like no other.
In Cuban Revelations, Marc Frank offers a first-hand account of daily life in Cuba at the turn of the twenty-first century, the start of a new and dramatic epoch for islanders and the Cuban diaspora. A U.S.-born journalist who has called Havana home for almost a quarter century, Frank observed in person the best days of the revolution, the fall of the Soviet Bloc, the great depression of the 1990s, the stepping aside of Fidel Castro, and the reforms now being devised by his brother. Examining the effects of U.S. policy toward Cuba, Frank analyzes why Cuba has entered an extraordinary, irreversible period of change and considers what the island's future holds. The enormous social engineering project taking place today under Raúl's leadership is fraught with many dangers, and Cuban Revelations follows the new leader's efforts to overcome bureaucratic resistance and the fears of a populace that stand in his way. In addition, Frank offers a colorful chronicle of his travels across the island's many and varied provinces, sharing candid interviews with people from all walks of life. He takes the reader outside the capital to reveal how ordinary Cubans live and what they are thinking and feeling as fifty-year-old social and economic taboos are broken. He shares his honest and unbiased observations on extraordinary positive developments in social matters, like healthcare and education, as well as on the inefficiencies in the Cuban economy.
Following on the success of the first edition of Cuba Then (2014), this revised and expanded edition introduces more than 100 dazzling new images that build on the allure of Cuba, past and present. In the last few years, Cuba has see seismic shifts in its politics and international standing: US-Cuba relations moved toward normalization, the US embassy was reopened, and Fidel Castro died. The intensified interest in Cuba has seen record numbers of Americans traveling there while they still can. In this climate, a new edition of Cuba Then will satisfy the growing curiosity around the country's history, adding to the visual culture and legacy. With thirty new pages and more than 100 newly selected vintage photographs and pieces of ephemera from the collection of Ramiro A. Fernández, the most extensive archive of Cuban photography and ephemera outside of Cuba, this book is a tribute to the lost eras of style, glamor, ebullience, intrigue, and upheaval. The more than 300 images here span the entire spectrum of photographic history, including rare nineteenth century daguerreotypes, cartes-de-visite, and stereoviews. Much of Fernández's collection is little seen and never published, presenting a rich spectrum of personalities spanning more than a century: aristocratic racecar drivers, movie actors and showgirls, magicians, spies, and campesinos. With an autobiographical introduction from the author, who was born in Havana, and peppered with selections from Richard Blanco's alluring poetry, these pages take readers inside circuses, concerts, filmsets, and street parades. From unlikely images of historical newsmakers (Fidel Castro drinking a Coca-Cola on a public bus) to a roster of jet-setting celebrities such as Celia Cruz, Winston Churchill, and María Félix, Cuba Then is a welcome new edition of this seductive and lush photographic survey of the small island that continues to fascinate the world.
“Frequent insights, stimulating historical comparisons, and command of the data relating to Cuba’s economic and social performance.” —Foreign Affairs Uncritically lauded by the left and impulsively denounced by the right, the Cuban Revolution is almost universally viewed one dimensionally. In this book, Samuel Farber, one of its most informed left-wing critics, provides a much-needed critical assessment of the Revolution’s impact and legacy. “The Cuban story twists and turns as we speak, so thank goodness for scholars such as Samuel Farber, an unapologetic Marxist whose knowledge of Cuban affairs is unrivalled . . . In this excellent, necessary book, Farber takes stock of fifty years of revolutionary control by recognizing achievements but lambasting authoritarianism.” —Latin American Review of Books “A courageous and formidable balance-sheet of the Cuban Revolution, including a sobering analysis of a draconian ‘reform’ program that will only deepen the gulf between revolutionary slogans and the actual life of the people.” —Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums
