Cuba

• John Lee Anderson
• Grove Press; April 1998
• Paperback; 832 pages
• 978-0-8021-1600-0

This book is not yet released, but is available for pre-order.

Acclaimed around the world and a national best-seller, this is the definitive work on Che Guervara, the dashing rebel whose epic dream was to end poverty and injustice in Latin America and the developing world through armed revolution. Jon Lee Anderson’s biography traces Che’s extraordinary life, from his comfortable Argentine upbringing to the battlefields of the Cuban revolution, from the halls of power in Castro’s government to his failed campaign in the Congo and assassination in the Bolivian jungle.

Anderson has had unprecedented access to the personal archives maintained by Guevara’s widow and carefully guarded Cuban government documents. He has conducted extensive interviews with Che’s comrades—some of whom speak here for the first time—and with the CIA men and Bolivian officers who hunted him down. Anderson broke the story of where Guevara’s body was buried, which led to the exhumation and state burial of the bones. Many of the details of Che’s life have long been cloaked in secrecy and intrigue. Meticulously researched and full of exclusive information, Che Guevara illuminates as never before this mythic figure who embodied the high-water mark of revolutionary communism as a force in history.

Fabin Escalante was born in Havana and at a young age became active in the underground movement against the Batista dictatorship. A former head of Cuban counterintelligence, he is internationally regarded as Cuba's foremost authority on US covert operations against Cuba and assassination plots against Fidel Castro. He also directed Cuba's investigation into the assassination of JFK.

• Simon Reid-Henry
• Walker & Company, 2009
• Hardcover, 431 pages
• 9780802715739

A unique dual portrait shines new light on two of the most dramatic figures of the twentieth century.

Though Che Guevara has been dead for more than forty years, and Fidel Castro has drifted offstage, their names remain forever and dramatically linked, in history and in the imagination. Their coming to prominence together during the Cuban Revolution captivated a generation. For some, their romantic struggle for freedom still resonates; for others, they represent the last of a dying breed of rebel warriors. Yet for all that has been written about them, surprisingly little has been revealed about the twelve years of their unique and highly consequential relationship, during which they linked arms in one of the world's most remarkable revolutionary movements.

• Fidel Castro with Ignacio Ramonet
• Penguin; 2008
• Paperback; 724 pages
• 978-0-14-102626-8

For years people have tried to persuade the leader of the Cuban Revolution to tell his own life story. Here, finally, Ignacio Ramonet, well-known activist and editor of Le Monde Diplomatique,has succeeded.

For the first time, in a series of probing interviews, Fidel Castro describes his life, from the 1950s all the way up to the present day. He discusses his parents, his earliest influences, the beginnings of the revolution, his relationship with Che Guevara, the Bay of Pigs, the Carter years, Cuban migration to the US. And along the way, Ramonet challenges Castro to discuss his views on a number of controversial questions, from human rights and freedom of the press to the repression of homosexuality and the survival of the death penalty, and he gives his opinion of other leaders, alive and dead, including George Bush and Tony Blair.

• Ann Louise Bardach & Luis Conte Aguero (eds.)
• Nation Books, 2007
• Paperback, 184 pages
• ISBN: 978156025983

Early in Ann Louise Bardach's Cuban voyage she came across Cartas de Presidio or The Prison Letters of Fidel Castro. Edited by Luis Conte Aguero, who was the recipient of most of these letters, they are cited in every important work from Hugh Thomas' opus Cuba to Tad Szulc's Fidel biography, and everything in between and since. These twenty-one letters (nine to Conte Aguero, six to his late sister and close collaborator, Lidia, one to his wife Mirta, one to his comrade in combat, Melba Hernandez letters, one to the great scholar Jorge Manach) are regarded as the single most valuable and revelatory document regarding Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution. Never before published in English, these letters were written when Castro was imprisoned for his failed attack on the Moncada from 1953 to 1955 and reveal a man of spectacular ambition and steely determination. A man, who despite being incarcerated to serve a lengthy prison term, never wavers in his confidence that he will one day rule Cuba.

Ann Louise Bardach is an award-winning investigative journalist who has been covering Cuba for ten years for The New York Times, Vanity Fair and other national publications. She has appeared on 60 Minutes, Today, Dateline, CNN, The O’Reilly Factor, Charlie Rose and NPR. She is the author of Cuba Confidential and lives in Santa Barbara, CA.

• Fidel Castro, Tariq Ali
• Verso, 2008
• Paperback, 138 pages
• 9781844671564

In response to the American administrations attempt to isolate Cuba, Fidel Castro delivered a series of speeches designed to radicalize Latin American society. As Latin America experiences more revolutions in Venezuela and Bolivia, and continues to upset Americas plans for neo-liberal imperialism, renowned radical writer and activist Tariq Ali provides a searing analysis of the relevance of Castros message for today.

• Dervla Murphy
• Eland, 2008
• Hardcover, 421 pages
• ISBN: 9781906011352

This book is not currently in stock, but is available to order (3-5 weeks).

Take a three-generation family holiday in Cuba in the company of Dervla Murphy, her daughter, and three young granddaughters as they trek into the hills and along the coast as a family, camping out on empty beaches beneath the stars and relishing the ubiquitous Cuban hospitality. But this is no more than the joyful start of a fully-fledged quest to understand the unique society created by the Cuban Revolution. For Dervla returns alone to explore the mountains, coastal swamps and decaying cities, investigating the experience of modern Cuba with her particular, candid curiosity, and builds a complex picture of a people struggling to retain their identity.

• Ernesto 'Che' Guevara
• Ocean Books; 2004
• Paperback; 174 pages
• 978-1-920888-10-7

A New York Times bestseller, this is the book of the popular movie “The Motorcycle Diaries,” directed by Walter Salles and starring Gael García Bernal as the young Che Guevara—or Ernesto, as he was at the time.

These lively and highly entertaining travel diaries are illustrated with photos from the original journey and mark the starting point of the young Argentine medical student’s transformation into one of the 20th century’s most enduring revolutionary icons.

Che’s daughter Aleida writes in her preface to this book:

“When I read these notes for the first time, I was quite young myself and I immediately identified with this man who narrated his adventures in such a spontaneous manner… There were moments when I literally took over [Alberto] Granado’s place on the motorbike and clung to my dad’s back, journeying with him over the mountains and around the lakes… To tell you the truth, the more I read, the more I was in love with the boy my father had been…”

Published in association with the Che Guevara Studies Center, Havana.