Download or read book I Was Cuba written by Ramiro Fernández and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2007-10-11 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Cuba Then written by Ramiro Fernández and published by The Monacelli Press, LLC. This book was released on 2018-05-29 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Cuba What Everyone Needs to Know written by Julia E Sweig and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2009-06-06 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Cuba Then Cuba Now written by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Cuba Winner of the Pulitzer Prize written by Ada Ferrer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 ambitious chronicle written for an era that demands a new reckoning with the island's past. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History reveals 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 influence of the United States on Cuba and 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. 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. --

Download or read book Cuba Then written by Ramiro Fernandez and published by The Monacelli Press, LLC. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Cuban Revelations written by Marc Frank and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Cuba Today and Tomorrow written by Max Azicri and published by . This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering the turbulent period of the 1990s, this book examines such issues as the impact on Cuba of the Soviet Union's collapse, the country's social malaise under economic scarcity, the reorganization of its economy, changes in its political system, problems in its relations with the United States, and the renaissance of Cuban religious life in the aftermath of the pope's visit. Azicri offers an objectively researched study that addresses many of the assumptions made by partisan participants. Demonstrating how Cuba's ongoing reform process has allowed it to avoid the fate of other Soviet bloc regimes, he maintains that Havana has continually reinvented the nature of Cuban socialism. Drawing on original sources and scholarly studies from Cuba, the United States, and elsewhere, he argues that a more restrained and limited socialism is suitable to today's Cuba and explains why such a system probably will prevail beyond Castro.

Download or read book This Is Cuba written by David Ariosto and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2018-12-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: USA Today "New and Noteworthy" • One of The Washington Post's "10 Books to Read—and Gift—in December" "Fascinating." —Forbes Fidel Castro is dead. Donald Trump was elected president. And to most outsiders, the fate of Cuba has never seemed more uncertain. Yet those who look close enough may recognize that signs of the next revolution are etched in plain view. This is Cuba is a true story that begins in the summer of 2009 when a young American photo-journalist is offered the chance of a lifetime—a two-year assignment in Havana. For David Ariosto, the island is an intriguing new world, unmoored from the one he left behind. From neighboring military coups, suspected honey traps, salty spooks, and desperate migrants to dissidents, doctors, and Havana’s empty shelves, Ariosto uncovers the island’s subtle absurdities, its Cold War mystique, and the hopes of a people in the throes of transition. Beyond the classic cars, salsa, and cigars lies a country in which black markets are ubiquitous, free speech is restricted, privacy is curtailed, sanctions wreak havoc, and an almost Kafka-esque goo of Soviet-style bureaucracy still slows the gears of an economy desperate to move forward. But life in Cuba is indeed changing, as satellite dishes and internet hotspots dot the landscape and more Americans want in. Still, it’s not so simple. The old sentries on both sides of the Florida Straits remain at their posts, fists clenched and guarding against the specter of a Cold War that never quite ended, despite the death of Fidel and the hand-over of the presidency to a man whose last name isn’t Castro. And now, a crisis is brewing. In This Is Cuba, Ariosto looks at Cuba from the inside-out over the course of nine years, endeavoring to expose clues for what’s in store for the island as it undergoes its biggest change in more than half a century.

Download or read book Havana Before Castro written by Peter Moruzzi and published by Gibbs Smith. This book was released on 2008-07-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Take a trip to the golden age of Havana in this gorgeously illustrated volume of vintage photographs, postcards, brochures, and other ephemera. Featuring hundreds of historic images and cultural artifacts, Havana Before Castro documents how the Cuban capital evolved from a Prohibition Era getaway destination to a heady blend of glittering nightclubs, outrageous cabarets, all-night bars, and backstreet brothels. Here, captured in one amazing book, is the drama, passion, intrigue, and opulence of a legendary city during its heyday—before the Castro regime took over and Americans were banned from travel to this tropical paradise. In chapters covering such topics as Cuban rum and cigars, the world-famous Tropicana Club, and Havana’s association with the mob, author Peter Moruzzi provides essential historical context for the many fascinating and evocative images.

Download or read book Havana Real written by Yoani Sanchez and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2011-04-26 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Cuba Going Back written by Tony Mendoza and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-07-05 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A subtle yet striking collection of sepia-like photographs depicting life in Cuba, coupled with the perceptive observations of a Cuban exile returning home.” —Miami Herald Imagine being unable to return to your homeland for thirty-six years. What would you do if you finally got a chance to go back? In 1996, after travel restrictions between the United States and Cuba were relaxed, Cuban exile Tony Mendoza answered that question. Taking his cameras, notebooks, and an unquenchable curiosity, he returned for his first visit to Cuba since the summer of 1960, when he emigrated with his family at age eighteen. In this book he presents over eighty evocative photographs accompanied by a beautifully written text that mingles the voices of many Cubans with his own to offer a compelling portrait of a resilient people awaiting the inevitable passing of the socialist system that has failed them. His photographs and interviews bear striking witness to the hardships and inequalities that exist in this workers’ “paradise,” where the daily struggle to make ends meet on an average income of eight dollars a month has created a longing for change even in formerly ardent revolutionaries. At the same time, Cuba—Going Back is an eloquent record of a personal journey back in time and memory that will resonate with viewers and readers both within and beyond the Cuban American community. It belongs on the shelves of anyone who values excellent photography and well-crafted prose. “This book, based on the photos and interviews he conducted on his trip, is a remarkable first-hand account of today’s Cuba.” —Library Journal

Download or read book Cuba on the Brink written by James G. Blight and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2002 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the disintegration of the Soviet Union and international socialism, Cuba now finds itself isolated as the United States continues to press for its economic and political collapse. How Fidel Castro sees Cuba's plight and what he hopes to do about it emerge from this account of a unique conference held in Havana in 1992. The meeting brought together participants in the Cuban missile crisis from the former Soviet Union, Cuba, and the U.S. to discuss its causes and course. This account is now available for the first time in paperback, on the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This first meeting between Castro, his ex-Soviet allies, and his American foes produced startling revelations about his dealings with the Soviets, chilling details of the number and kind of Soviet nuclear arms that Cuba possessed in 1962, and an illuminating account of Castro's view of the American threat--then and now. The dramatic exchanges between Castro and such conference participants as Anatoly I. Gribkov, former head of the Warsaw Pact; former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara; and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Special Assistant to John Kennedy, reveal misperceptions on all sides that led us to the brink of nuclear war. An extraordinary examination of an international crisis, Cuba on the Brink illustrates the ongoing "Cuba problem," and will help guide our actions toward other countries deemed hostile to our national interest.

Download or read book Back Channel to Cuba written by William M. LeoGrande and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-09-14 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History is being made in U.S.-Cuban relations. Now in paperback and updated to tell the real story behind the stunning December 17, 2014, announcement by President Obama and President Castro of their move to restore full diplomatic relations, this powerful book is essential to understanding ongoing efforts toward normalization in a new era of engagement. Challenging the conventional wisdom of perpetual conflict and aggression between the United States and Cuba since 1959, Back Channel to Cuba chronicles a surprising, untold history of bilateral efforts toward rapprochement and reconciliation. William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh here present a remarkably new and relevant account, describing how, despite the intense political clamor surrounding efforts to improve relations with Havana, negotiations have been conducted by every presidential administration since Eisenhower's through secret, back-channel diplomacy. From John F. Kennedy's offering of an olive branch to Fidel Castro after the missile crisis, to Henry Kissinger's top secret quest for normalization, to Barack Obama's promise of a new approach, LeoGrande and Kornbluh uncovered hundreds of formerly secret U.S. documents and conducted interviews with dozens of negotiators, intermediaries, and policy makers, including Fidel Castro and Jimmy Carter. They reveal a fifty-year record of dialogue and negotiations, both open and furtive, that provides the historical foundation for the dramatic breakthrough in U.S.-Cuba ties.

Download or read book An Island Called Home written by Ruth Behar and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of the author's return to learn about and meet the people who are keeping Judaism alive in Cuba today.

Download or read book Havana Nocturne written by T. J. English and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In modern-day Havana, the remnants of the glamorous past are everywhere—old hotel-casinos, vintage American cars & flickering neon signs speak of a bygone era that is widely familiar & often romanticized, but little understood. In Havana Nocturne, T.J. English offers a multifaceted true tale of organized crime, political corruption, roaring nightlife, revolution & international conflict that interweaves the dual stories of the Mob in Havana & the event that would overshadow it, the Cuban Revolution. As the Cuban people labored under a violently repressive regime throughout the 50s, Mob leaders Meyer Lansky & Charles "Lucky" Luciano turned their eye to Havana. To them, Cuba was the ultimate dream, the greatest hope for the future of the US Mob in the post-Prohibition years of intensified government crackdowns. But when it came time to make their move, it was Lansky, the brilliant Jewish mobster, who reigned supreme. Having cultivated strong ties with the Cuban government & in particular the brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista, Lansky brought key mobsters to Havana to put his ambitious business plans in motion. Before long, the Mob, with Batista's corrupt government in its pocket, owned the biggest luxury hotels & casinos in Havana, launching an unprecedented tourism boom complete with the most lavish entertainment, the world's biggest celebrities, the most beautiful women & gambling galore. But their dreams collided with those of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara & others who would lead the country's disenfranchised to overthrow their corrupt government & its foreign partners—an epic cultural battle that English captures in all its sexy, decadent, ugly glory. Bringing together long-buried historical information with English's own research in Havana—including interviews with the era's key survivors—Havana Nocturne takes readers back to Cuba in the years when it was a veritable devil's playground for mob leaders. English deftly weaves together the parallel stories of the Havana Mob—featuring notorious criminals such as Santo Trafficante Jr & Albert Anastasia—& Castro's 26th of July Movement in a riveting, up-close look at how the Mob nearly attained its biggest dream in Havana—& how Fidel Castro trumped it all with the revolution.

Download or read book The Cubans written by Anthony DePalma and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[DePalma] renders a Cuba few tourists will ever see . . . You won't forget these people soon, and you are bound to emerge from DePalma's bighearted account with a deeper understanding of a storied island . . . A remarkably revealing glimpse into the world of a muzzled yet irrepressibly ebullient neighbor."--The New York Times Modern Cuba comes alive in a vibrant portrait of a group of families's varied journeys in one community over the last twenty years. Cubans today, most of whom have lived their entire lives under the Castro regime, are hesitantly embracing the future. In his new book, Anthony DePalma, a veteran reporter with years of experience in Cuba, focuses on a neighborhood across the harbor from Old Havana to dramatize the optimism as well as the enormous challenges that Cubans face: a moving snapshot of Cuba with all its contradictions as the new regime opens the gate to the capitalism that Fidel railed against for so long. In Guanabacoa, longtime residents prove enterprising in the extreme. Scrounging materials in the black market, Cary Luisa Limonta Ewen has started her own small manufacturing business, a surprising turn for a former ranking member of the Communist Party. Her good friend Lili, a loyal Communist, heads the neighborhood's watchdog revolutionary committee. Artist Arturo Montoto, who had long lived and worked in Mexico, moved back to Cuba when he saw improving conditions but complains like any artist about recognition. In stark contrast, Jorge García lives in Miami and continues to seek justice for the sinking of a tugboat full of refugees, a tragedy that claimed the lives of his son, grandson, and twelve other family members, a massacre for which the government denies any role. In The Cubans, many patriots face one new question: is their loyalty to the revolution, or to their country? As people try to navigate their new reality, Cuba has become an improvised country, an old machine kept running with equal measures of ingenuity and desperation. A new kind of revolutionary spirit thrives beneath the conformity of a half century of totalitarian rule. And over all of this looms the United States, with its unpredictable policies, which warmed towards its neighbor under one administration but whose policies have now taken on a chill reminiscent of the Cold War.