Download or read book Real life in Castro s Cuba written by Catherine Moses and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 1999-11-01 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new book provides a first-hand, grassroots look at life in Cuba, including very vivid descriptions of its people and places. Real Life in Castro's Cuba illuminates the human face of Cuba, which over the years has largely been hidden in the shadow of Fidel Castro. Real Life in Castro's Cuba is written by Catherine Moses, who lived and worked in Cuba as a press secretary and spokesperson for the United States from 1995 to 1996. This compelling, compassionate portrait contains personal observations about the Cubans' struggles, triumphs, hopes, and daily compromises to survive. The Cuban population lives with a deteriorating infrastructure, forcing many hardships on the people, including a scarcity of food, fuel, clothing, medicines, and other basic needs. The author's detailed cultural account of Cuba introduces the reader to everyday Cubans from party officials to dissidents to everyone in between. It shows how Cuba's socialist system works and gives reasons why Fidel Castro is still in power. Real Life in Castro's Cuba also describes the significant role of religion and spirituality in the life of Cubans. Although Moses expresses regret over the state of U.S.-Cuban relations, the purpose of the book is not to choose up sides. Instead, the book is designed simply to introduce readers to real life in Cuba. The book's unique approach allows an intimate picture of life in a faded Marxist regime. As the author writes, 'Cuba is a curious mixture of Spanish Caribbean, socialist ideals gone awry, memories of what was, and a desperate need to survive.' This fascinating new book will appeal to all readers who are interested in getting a closer look at what life is like in Cuba today.
Download or read book Cuba 1952 1959 written by Manuel Márquez-Sterling and published by Kleiopatria Digital Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author Manuel Márquez-Sterling writes about Fidel Castro and his revolution from direct personal experience, as a historian with broad and deep knowledge of 50s Cuba. The author knew and had contact with many of the historical figures in the book's pages. His penetrating analysis of the public and behind-the-scenes events clears the fog and shatters myths to reveal the real story of the Cuban Revolution. The book explains how Castro came to power through the convergence of rabid partisanship, radical student politics, media bias, and venal politicians who placed self interest ahead of preserving democracy. Facing a constitutional crisis, these parties espoused "the end justifies the means," embracing political gangsterism and eschewing negotiations with political opponents- resulting in a power vacuum Castro exploited to seize power. Masterful propaganda cast Castro as pro-democracy hero, avoiding scrutiny of his plans for a totalitarian state under his control.
Download or read book The Other Side of Paradise written by Julia Cooke and published by Seal Press. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Change looms in Havana, Cuba's capital, a city electric with uncertainty yet cloaked in cliché, 90 miles from U.S. shores and off-limits to most Americans. Journalist Julia Cooke, who lived there at intervals over a period of five years, discovered a dynamic scene: baby-faced anarchists with Mohawks gelled with laundry soap, whiskey-drinking children of the elite, Santería trainees, pregnant prostitutes, university graduates planning to leave for the first country that will give them a visa. This last generation of Cubans raised under Fidel Castro animate life in a waning era of political stagnation as the rest of the world beckons: waiting out storms at rummy hurricane parties and attending raucous drag cabarets, planning ascendant music careers and black-market business ventures, trying to reconcile the undefined future with the urgent today. Eye-opening and politically prescient, The Other Side of Paradise offers a deep new understanding of a place that has so confounded and intrigued us.
Download or read book Inside El Barrio written by Henry Louis Taylor and published by Kumarian Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Inside El Barrio" charts the legacy of Fidel Castro through the unique lens of Cuban household life during the El Perodo Especial (the Special Period). Taylor traverses the neighborhoods and residential developments of Havana between 1989 and 2006, the final and most complex period in the "Age of Castros Cuba" to uncover the hidden vibrancy of Cubas streets and citizens. In doing so, he acquires a deeper understanding of Cuban society by exploring what it means to live in a people-centered nation and the importance of neighborhoods in shaping everyday life and culture.
Download or read book The Double Life of Fidel Castro written by Juan Reinaldo Sanchez and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory memoir of the 17 years Juan Sanchez spent as one of Fidel Castro's personal soldiers, in his innermost circle
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 The Real Fidel Castro written by Leycester Coltman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rhetoric during and after the Cold War years has painted starkly contrasting portraits of Cuba's Fidel Castro: an unblemished idealist on the one hand, a ruthless dictator on the other. This insightful book, the most intimate and dispassionate biography of the revolutionary leader to date, shows that neither assessment is true. Leycester Coltman, British ambassador to Cuba in the early 1990s, came as close to personal friendship with Castro as any foreigner was permitted. With frequent contact and regular conversations, Coltman was in a unique position to observe the dictator's personality in both public and private situations. Here he presents a close-up view of the man who for half a century has been loved, admired, feared, and hated, but seldom really understood. Coltman chronicles the events of the Cuban leader's extraordinary life from the political activism of his university days in Havana to periods of exile, imprisonment, and guerilla warfare alongside Che Guevara, to the uncertainties of his old age. Drawing on personal observation and archival sources in Cuba and abroad, Coltman explores the contradiction between the private character and the public reputation, and highlights the complexities of the consummate actor who continues to play a crucial role on the international stage.
Download or read book Lee Lockwood Castro s Cuba 1959 1969 written by Lee Lockwood and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1959 and 1969, photojournalist Lee Lockwood documented Cuba and its victorious revolutionary Fidel Castro with unprecedented freedom and access, including a marathon seven-day interview with Castro himself. This volume includes Lockwood's evocative photographs of Cuba and Castro, his many insightful observations, and extensive excerpts...
Download or read book Cuba before Castro written by Jorge J. E. Gracia and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-07-27 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although much has been written about Cuba after Castro, relatively little has been written about Cuba before Castro. The political reality of Castro’s Revolution has created a historical void about this period, paying insufficient attention to an important century before 1959. Cuba has become a political punching bag, between supporters and critics of Castro and the Revolution, making it difficult to understand real life in Cuba because of the disproportionate preoccupation with, and monopoly of, the political reality on the island. In spite of some attempts, it continues to be easier and perceived as more pressing, to write about politics rather than the reality that Cubans experienced in their daily lives— their sufferings and celebrations, successes and failures, lives and deaths, and beliefs and disbeliefs. Going for and against the avalanche of information about the political authenticity in and out of Cuba, most Cubans have tended to forget that Cuba is much larger than the perceived reality after Castro’s Revolution. Too many have failed to remember the Cubans who have lived and worked in Cuba in the century before an important period of Cuban history where the nation was forged. Indeed, even limited attention reveals a rich and sophisticated society that calls for study. In this book Jorge J.E. Gracia approaches this situation by telling true stories about some members of his family (Doctor Ignacio Gracia, Maruca Otero, the Marques de Arguelles, and many others) who lived during a culturally rich century before Castro. He hopes to entice historians, academics, tourists and others, to pursue a balanced exploration of the island by telling part of their stories. This enterprise is neither history nor fiction, but memories written by a Cuban who left Cuba when he was eighteen years old and has become a distinguished philosopher in the United States.
Download or read book Young Castro written by Jonathan M. Hansen and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This intimate, revisionist portrait of Fidel Castro, showing how an unlikely young Cuban led his country in revolution and transfixed the world, is “sure to become the standard on Castro’s early life” (Publishers Weekly). Until now, biographers have treated Castro’s life like prosecutors, scouring his past for evidence to convict a person they don’t like or don’t understand. Young Castro challenges us to put aside the caricature of a bearded, cigar-munching, anti-American hothead to discover how Castro became the dictator who acted as a thorn in the side of US presidents for nearly half a century. In this “gripping and edifying narrative…Hansen brings imposing research and notable erudition” (Booklist) to Castro’s early life, showing Castro getting his toughness from a father who survived Spain’s class system and colonial wars to become one of the most successful independent plantation owners in Cuba. We see a boy running around that plantation more comfortable playing with the children of his father’s laborers than his own classmates at elite boarding schools in Santiago de Cuba and Havana. We discover a young man who writes flowery love letters from prison and contemplates the meaning of life, a gregarious soul attentive to the needs of strangers but often indifferent to the needs of his own family. These pages show a liberal democrat who admires FDR’s New Deal policies and is skeptical of communism, but is also hostile to American imperialism. They show an audacious militant who stages a reckless attack on a military barracks but is canny about building an army of resisters. In short, Young Castro reveals a complex man. The first American historian in a generation to gain access to the Castro archives in Havana, Jonathan Hansen was able to secure cooperation from Castro’s family and closest confidants. He gained access to hundreds of never-before-seen letters and interviewed people he was the first to ask for their impressions of the man. The result is a nuanced and penetrating portrait of a man at once brilliant, arrogant, bold, vulnerable, and all too human: a man who, having grown up on an island that felt like a colonial cage, was compelled to lead his country to independence.
Download or read book Journey To The Heart Of Cuba written by Carlos Alberto Montaner and published by Algora Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of the Cuban Revolution and what caused it, the psychology of its protagonists, and a critical assessment of its results, by a. Cuban-born journalist, author and professor residing in Spain. In a disquieting epilogue, the author dares to.
Download or read book Fidel Castro written by Hourly History and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-09-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fidel Castro When Fidel Castro died on November 25, 2016, it seemed as if much of the world didn't quite know what to make of the revolutionary leader. The images of loyal Cubans in Havana openly crying in the streets stood in stark contrast to the Cuban exiles and their descendants just 90 miles away in Miami, Florida. While Cuban citizens were mourning, Cuban Americans were celebrating; they were laughing, dancing, and drinking to celebrate Castro's demise. It seems that Fidel Castro was just as polarizing in death as he was in life. Inside you will read about... - The Beginnings of a Revolutionary - Castro Meets Che Guevara - The Bay of Pigs - The Cuban Missile Crisis - Castro's Soviet Ally - The Assassination Conspiracy - Doctors For Oil And much more! Learn more about the life of one of the twentieth century's most controversial figures.
Download or read book My Life written by Ignacio Ramonet and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-06-09 with total page 755 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a series of interviews with a European journalist and scholar, the Cuban leader describes his early life, the Cuban Revolution, and his experiences ruling Cuba, and discusses his views on socialism, international affairs, and the future.
Download or read book This Is Cuba written by Ben Corbett and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2007-10-15 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond the throngs of tourists streaming through Central Havana's broad Prado Avenue, and outside the yoke of Castro's 43-year-old Revolutionary program, there exists a parallel Cuba - a separate evolution of a people struggling to survive. With personal stories that depict a people torn between following the directives of their government and finding a way to better their lot, journalist Ben Corbett gives us the daily life of many considered outlaws by Castro's regime. But are they outlaws or rather ingenious survivors of what many Cubans consider to be a forty-year mistake, a tangle of contradictions that has resulted in a strange hybrid of American-style capitalism and a homegrown black market economy. At a time when Cuba walks precariously on the ledge between socialism and capitalism, This Is Cuba gets to the heart of this so-called outlaw culture, taking readers into the living rooms, rooftops, parks, and city streets to hear stories of frustration, hope, and survival. Updated with a new preface.
Download or read book Close But No Cigar written by Stephen Purvis and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2017-03-23 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE CRIME WRITERS' ASSOCIATION GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION 2017 'In its tragic absurdity, Close But No Cigar reads like a Graham Greene story, with a cast of characters to make Hemingway proud' Daily Telegraph For over a decade Stephen Purvis had been a pillar of Havana's expat community, one of many foreign businessmen investing in Cuba's crawl from Cold War communism towards modernity. But for reasons unknown to him he was also under State Security's microscope. One morning during the height of President Raúl Castro's purges in 2012, while his family slept the unmarked Ladas of State Security arrived at his home and he was taken away into the absurd and brutal world of Cuban justice. In this engrossing memoir, Purvis recounts his fifteen-month ordeal. Accused at first of selling state secrets, he is taken to the notorious interrogation centre Villa Marista, where he endures brutal conditions designed by the KGB and Stasi to break the bodies and minds of spies and political prisoners, and resists the paranoia and incompetence of his jailers. Later, held in a maximum-security prison, he finds himself surrounded by a motley crew of convicts: people-smugglers and drug-runners together with a handful of confused businessmen also awaiting formal charges. From his arrest to his farcical secret trial and sudden release, Purvis exposes the madness of modern Cuba with wit, grit and a sharp eye for character. As tourists flock to Havana to marvel at a city frozen in time, he shows that despite reforms and international reconciliation the Castro regime remains a corrupt, dictatorial relic. Close But No Cigar is part thriller, part comedy and part morality tale, but most of all a true story that takes the reader into a dark side of a sunny place that remains an enigma.
Download or read book Child of the Revolution written by Luis M. Garcia and published by Allen & Unwin. This book was released on 2006-06 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cuba, a land of cigars, hot nights, sultry music and romantic revolutionary heroes. But what was it really like to live in Fidel Castro's tropical paradise? With an evocative wide-eyed innocence, Luis M. Garcia takes us back to his Cuban childhood and his parents' dreams of escape. Child of the Revolution is a story about growing up in an extraordinary place at an extraordinary time, as the superpowers prepared to go to war over nuclear missiles installed on the tiny Caribbean island. It's a story set in a world of uncertainty and revolutionary upheaval, where a 10-year-old swears allegiance to Lenin, Marx and the legendary Che Guevara under swaying palm trees, with no idea of what it all means, except this is the only way to become a better revolutionary' and get out of school early. It is also the story of brothers and sisters torn apart by politics and how a Cuban teenager and his family end up by sheer accident - on the other side of the world. Warm, generous and gently amusing, Child of the Revolution stirs the heart and brings music to the soul.
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.
