Download or read book Havana World Series written by José Latour and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “dark, rich, and satisfying” novel of mobsters, baseball, and 1950s Cuba (Entertainment Weekly). It is the fall of 1958 and all of Cuba is riveted to the World Series—the New York Yankees are playing the Milwaukee Braves, and the infamous Meyer Lansky’s gambling empire is raking in millions in bets. But rival mob boss Joe Bonnano, working with a team of Cuba’s boldest and most ingenious criminals, plans to hijack Lanksy’s fortune. The heist goes off brilliantly—until Bonnano’s point man is shot dead. As Lansky’s man in the police department investigates the case, he is caught up in a colorful and dangerous world of gangsters, misfits, and double-crosses . . . “A lively, entertaining read.” —Publishers Weekly “The characters are fascinating, the story compelling . . . You couldn’t ask for more.” —Orlando Sentinel “Suspenseful . . . captures the sights, sounds, smells and rhythms of Havana.” —The Miami Herald

Download or read book The Book of Havana written by Daniel Chavarria and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2018-06-21 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a history teacher decides to throw out an old, threadbare Cuban flag, he doesn’t plan for the air of suspicion that quickly descends on him… A woman’s attempt to register ownership of her family home draws her into a bureaucratic labyrinth that requires a grasp of higher mathematics to fully comprehend… On the day of their graduation, a group of students spend the night drinking around the ‘Fountain of Youth’, ironically celebrating the bright future that doesn’t await them… The stories gathered in this anthology reflect the many complex challenges Havana’s citizens have had to endure as a result of their country’s political isolation – from the hardships of the ‘Special Period’, to the pitfalls of Cuba’s schizophrenic currency system, to the indignities of becoming a cheap tourist destination for well-heeled Westerners. Moving through various moments in its recent history, as well as through different neighbourhoods – from the prefab, Soviet-era maze of Alamar, to the bars and nightclubs of the Malecón and Vedado – these stories also demonstrate the defiance of Havana: surviving decades of economic disappointment with a flair for the comic, the surreal and the fantastical that remains as fresh as the first dreams of revolution. Translated from the Spanish by Orsola Casagrande and Séamas Carraher.

Download or read book Havana Red written by Leonardo Padura and published by Bitter Lemon Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young transvestite found strangled in a Havana park. The stifling death of a beloved Cuba.

Download or read book Last Dance in Havana written by Eugene Robinson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-11-20 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In power for forty-four years and counting, Fidel Castro has done everything possible to define Cuba to the world and to itself -- yet not even he has been able to control the thoughts and dreams of his people. Those thoughts and dreams are the basis for what may become a post-Castro Cuba. To more fully understand the future of America's near neighbor, veteran reporter Eugene Robinson knew exactly where to look -- or rather, to listen. In this provocative work, Robinson takes us on a sweaty, pulsating, and lyrical tour of a country on the verge of revolution, using its musicians as a window into its present and future. Music is the mother's milk of Cuban culture. Cubans express their fondest hopes, their frustrations, even their political dissent, through music. Most Americans think only of salsa and the Buena Vista Social Club when they think of the music of Cuba, yet those styles are but a piece of a broad musical spectrum. Just as the West learned more about China after the Cultural Revolution by watching From Mao to Mozart, so will readers discover the real Cuba -- the living, breathing, dying, yet striving Cuba. Cuban music is both wildly exuberant and achingly melancholy. A thick stew of African and European elements, it is astoundingly rich and influential to have come from such a tiny island. From rap stars who defy the government in their lyrics to violinists and pianists who attend the world's last Soviet-style conservatory to international pop stars who could make millions abroad yet choose to stay and work for peanuts, Robinson introduces us to unforgettable characters who happily bring him into their homes and backstage discussions. Despite Castro's attempts to shut down nightclubs, obstruct artists, and subsidize only what he wants, the musicians and dancers of Cuba cannot stop, much less behave. Cubans move through their complicated lives the way they move on the dance floor, dashing and darting and spinning on a dime, seducing joy and fulfillment and next week's supply of food out of a broken system. Then at night they take to the real dance floors and invent fantastic new steps. Last Dance in Havana is heartwrenching, yet ultimately as joyous and hopeful as a rocking club late on a Saturday night.

Download or read book The Mafia in Havana written by Enrique Cirules and published by Ocean Press (AU). This book was released on 2004 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dramatic account of the pre-revolution era in Cuba, describing the culture of casinos, cabarets and drugs on an island frequented by Hollywood celebrities and infamous Mafia bosses. Mafia in Cuba is a tale of corruption and organised crime, where politicians are sold to the highest bidder and where real power lies with the Mafia and other US interests. Enrique Cirules uses both Cuban and US sources to document the intertwined relationships between Washington, the Mafia and the pre-revolution governments in Cuba.

Download or read book Havana written by Stephen Hunter and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-07-26 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is 1953 and Cuba is at its lush and glamorous best. However, the rise of a daring revolutionary named Fidel Castro threatens this tropical paradise. Legendary sniper Earl Swagger is called in by the CIA to take Castro out. Now available in a tall Premium Edition. Reissue.

Download or read book Inside Havana written by and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2002-07 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having enjoyed four years of unprecedented access to the private interiors of Cuba's capital, Moore has created an unrivaled portrait of both its legendary historic architecture and the city's inner life. 80 color photos.

Download or read book Adios Havana written by Andrew J. Rodriguez and published by Outskirts Press, Inc.. This book was released on 2005 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Havana . . . lilting rumbas, caf con leche, sultry sea breezes. Sparkling white beaches by day, scintillating nightclubs after dark. This sophisticated, international capital was the crown jewel of an island paradise-until the idealism that fed the Cuban Revolution yielded a nightmare of soul-crushing dictatorship. Adios, Havana is a true account of romance and peril, adventure and patriotism. Fueled by love-love of family, of country, and of each other-a young couple must face the most wrenching of choices: remain in the country they cherish, lose the wealth and position their families strove for generations to attain, and watch their children grow up impoverished under a terrifying regime; or risk escaping with no money or possessions and leave behind all they have ever known to begin a new life in a strange land. A legacy to future generations, this memoir is intended to remind readers of the fragility of freedom . . . to describe the disintegration of a prosperous civilized society and offer counsel on how to prevent a similar catastrophe from happening in America . . . and to show how and why penniless refugees flourish in the land of the free-why anyone who resists oppression would be driven to tell his beloved homeland, Adios.

Download or read book Cuba and Its Music written by Ned Sublette and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2007-02 with total page 690 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This entertaining history of Cuba and its music begins with the collision of Spain and Africa and continues through the era of Miguelito Valdes, Arsenio Rodriguez, Benny More, and Perez Prado. It offers a behind-the-scenes examination of music from a Cuban point of view, unearthing surprising, provocative connections and making the case that Cuba was fundamental to the evolution of music in the New World. The ways in which the music of black slaves transformed 16th-century Europe, how the "claves" appeared, and how Cuban music influenced ragtime, jazz, and rhythm and blues are revealed. Music lovers will follow this journey from Andalucia, the Congo, the Calabar, Dahomey, and Yorubaland via Cuba to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Saint-Domingue, New Orleans, New York, and Miami. The music is placed in a historical context that considers the complexities of the slave trade; Cuba's relationship to the United States; its revolutionary political traditions; the music of Santeria, Palo, Abakua, and Vodu; and much more.

Download or read book Havana written by Antoni Kapcia and published by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. This book was released on 2005-07 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fat cigars, big cars, dirty money, vibrant music, intellectual ferment. Havana, since its creation in 1535, has long offered a unique, bewildering mix of the backward and the hip, the seedy and the sophisticated. In many respects, it shares the characteristics of other colonial or post-colonial cities of the Caribbean and Latin America. But at the same time, Havana created its own niche both as an international city and a dynamic national capital. Despite Cuba's fluctuating fortunes, Havana has always managed to thrive and develop its own unique character as an urban, social, economic, cultural and political site. Havana offers a sweeping account of the city and its cultural development, focusing especially on the last two centuries and on the role played by the city's cultural communities in the search for national identity. The author introduces us to a marginal city with roots in the sixteenth century, taking us through the periods when it was a sugar boomtown, pulled between empires, a decadent metropolis, a site of both cultural revolution and relative stagnation during the development of the Revolution to its revival in the 1990s. He looks at the often creative tensions between external influences (especially Spain, France and the United States) and indigenous cultural pressures. Areas covered include architecture, literature, music, dance, cinema and the press. Cosmopolitan playground and nationalist vanguard, Havana has developed its own style while at the same time both reflecting and directing the complicated politics of the whole of Cuba. This book offers a concise introduction to one of the most intriguing cities of the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Cuba Confidential written by Ann Louise Bardach and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From America’s number one Cuba reporter, PEN award–winning investigative journalist Ann Louise Bardach, comes the big book on Cuba we’ve all been waiting for. An incisive and spirited portrait of the twentieth century’s wiliest political survivor and his fiefdom, Cuba Confidential is the gripping story of the shattered families and warring personalities that lie at the heart of the forty-three-year standoff between Miami and Havana. Famous to many Americans for her cover stories and media appearances, Ann Louise Bardach has been covering Cuba for a decade. She’s talked to the crooks, spooks and politicians who have made history, and to their hired assassins and confidants. Based on exclusive interviews with Fidel Castro, his sister Juanita, his former brother-in-law Rafael Díaz-Balart, the family of Elián González, the friends and family of the legendary American fugitive Robert Vesco, the intrepid terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, and the inner circles of Jeb Bush and the late exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, Cuba Confidential exposes the hardball take-no-prisoners tactics of the Cuban exile leadership, and its manipulation and exploitation by ten American presidents. Bardach homes in on Fidel Castro and his cronies, taking us closer than we’ve ever been—and on the militant exiles who have devoted their lives, with CIA connivance, to trying to eliminate him. From Calle Ocho to Juan Miguel González’s kitchen table in Cárdenas, from Guantánamo Bay to Union City to Washington, D.C., Ann Louise Bardach serves up an unforgettable portrait of Cuba and its exiles.

Download or read book Leaving Havana written by Conchita Hernandez Hicks and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2011-02 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cuba was a playground for the wealthy in the 1950s. It was a place to bask in the sun during the day, and enjoy many fine nightclubs, restaurants, theaters, and casinos after the sun went down. Many wealthy Americans traveled to Cuba for both business and pleasure. In January of 1959, everything changed. I was a little girl in Cuba at that time. I was living a life of luxury with practically anything that my little heart desired. My family had a chauffeur and homes in the city, in the country, and at the beach. I had my own nanny. I had parents and grandparents that loved me and lived close by so that I could see them almost every day. I was truly living a fairy-tale existence. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, my world came crashing down around me. Fidel Castro took over Cuba and made devastating changes to the country - and to the lives of those who lived there. The fairy tale quickly came to an end. Many difficult decisions had to be made by my parents and by many others. The world that we knew no longer existed. We had to leave loved ones and property behind. We had to move forward to a new life in a different country, with different customs, and a different language - and there was no turning back.

Download or read book Waiting For Snow In Havana written by Carlos Eire and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-11 with total page 579 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous and cruel, like any other-but with certain differences. The neighbour's monkey was liable to escape and run across your roof. Surfing was conducted by driving cars across the breakwater. Lizards and firecrackers made frequent contact. Carlos Eire's childhood was a little different from most. His father was convinced he had been Louis XVI in a past life. At school, classmates with fathers in the Batista government were attended by chauffeurs and bodyguards. At a home crammed with artifacts and paintings, portraits of Jesus spoke to him in dreams and nightmares. Then, in January 1959, the world changes: Batista is suddenly gone, a cigar-smoking guerrilla has taken his place, and Christmas is cancelled. The echo of firing squads is everywhere. And, one by one, the author's schoolmates begin to disappear-spirited away to the United States. Carlos will end up there himself, without his parents, never to see his father again. Narrated with the urgency of a confession, WAITING FOR SNOW IN HAVANA is both an ode to a paradise lost and an exorcism. More than that, it captures the terrible beauty of those times in our lives when we are certain we have died-and then are somehow, miraculously, reborn.

Download or read book Havana Beyond the Ruins written by Anke Birkenmaier and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-10 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at portrayals of Havana in literature, music, and the visual arts in the post-Soviet era, as the city is reinvented as a destination for international tourists and business ventures.

Download or read book Havana Fever written by Leonardo Padura and published by Bitter Lemon Press. This book was released on 2009-05-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scorching novel from a star of Cuban fiction. The return of Mario Conde.

Download or read book Havana Black written by Leonardo Padura and published by Bitter Lemon Press. This book was released on 2006-06-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scorching novel from a star of Cuban fiction. Second Conde mystery set in languid Havana.

Download or read book Havana written by Claudia Lightfoot and published by Signal Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of Havana's history and its paradoxes: a city where architectural treasures survive among the crumbling tenements; where a vibrant street life takes place amidst shortages; and where revolutionary politics, machismo and a thriving black market co-exist.