Caribbean Books

Personally, this book answered the question, "Just what is it about that little island?" Cuba seems to captivate the collective imagination for its drama, romance and endurance. Cuba in Mind left me feeling that the stereotypes are all true, but there's much more and thank god for that! It's a satisfying read for anyone - from the academic to the cultural tourist.

"A Tourist takes in the local sights; a Traveler sees the reality of a landscape."

In writing on travel to Cuba, the Spiritual Traveler decides to give a voice to the Cuban Silent Majority. The Silent Majority in Cuba are:

Voices unheard in books about Cuba. We read about those who leave, but not about those who stay;
Mostly black, mulatto, and rural white;
Descendants of slaves;
Masses of uneducated servants and peasant class before the Revolution. Those whose freedom was denied after their participation in the struggle during the Cuban War for Independence (1898);
Loyal to Fidel; Most protective of the Revolution and subsequent Post-Revolutionary way of life so imbibed in African culture; Most affected by the US Blockade and least likely to receive remittances from relatives in the US;
Those who would lose the most with a return to the Pre-Revolutionary status quo.

This is the first book to give voice to the Cuban Silent Majority, to hear their stories and know their consciousness. It gives future travelers to Cuba another perspective of Cuba to consider.

The Cuban-Caribbean Missile Crisis of October 1962, so designated by Soviet and Cuban officials and sholars, brought the United States and the Soviet Union to brink of nuclear war. This timely study provides students of international affairs an oportunity to examine in detail the decision-making process which first caused, and later enabled the two powers to resolve the crisis.

Between 1989 and 1994 six conferences have been held featuring U.S., Soviet and Cuban participants in the crisis as well as scholars seeking to clarify the event. declassified documents fom these three nations, as well as memoirs and interviews, have provided additional information regarding the period before, during and after that event. Not unexpectantly, the new material has raised controversy as well as providing enlightenment.

Of particular value to librarians and researchers is the extensive bibliography of the essential literture which Brune has appended to his study. - from book's back cover

Except for correcting a few minor slips and typographical errors, we have made no changes in the main body of the text. Two major misjudgments - that the oil companies would not refuse to refine Soviet oil and that the United States government would not cut the Cuban sugar quota - have been allowed to remain undisturbed because of what seems to us to be their considerable educational value. They testify to a lingering belief in the rationality of those who make United Staites foreign policy. We would like others to learn from our mistakes, as we hope we have. The important change in this edition is the addition of a chapter entitled "Epilogue- Cuba Revisited" which reports on a three-week trip to Cuba in September and October, 1960. That the few months intervening between the first and second editions have brought exciting and historically important changes in Cuba and Cuba's relations with the outside world, we hope we have demonstrated.
--- from book's Preface to Second Edition

Jorge Figueredo has done a monumental job in presenting the statistical history of Cuban baseball over a period of more than 80 years.
This book provides, not only statistics of the legendary Cuban players (Mendez, Oms, Torriente, etc.), and the great Negro league players (Jud Wilson, Dobie Moore, Oscar Charleston, etc.), it also pprovides statistics of the major league players, who played in the Cuban Winter League during the major league off-season - players like Charlie Dressen, Eddie Brown, and Jimmy Cooney.
'Cuban Baseball' is a classic, and it will be a standard reference book for baseball fans and historians, for many decades.
Outstanding job Jorge!!!!

In its tenth edition, this mammoth tome is rightly considered to be the "bible" of Cuban Studies. It both covers a wide breadth of political subjects and has an equally wide variety of contributors. Anyone wishing one-stop shopping for understanding the last 40 years in Cuba and Cuba-American relations will find this to be a beneficial purchase.

This book has become a classic for all of us who study Cuba's history and society. However, I must also recommend the book for any student of social and cultural anthropology interested in cross cultural interactions and acculturation ("transculturación" in Ortiz's own words. It is incredible that his ideas on this subject have been mostly ignored by the United States anthropological community, despite the strong support Ortiz received from Bronislaw Malinowsky. I highly recommend it.

Bonachea, Ramon L. and Marta San Martín 1974 The last battle in The Cuban Insurrection, 1952-1959 Transaction Publishers ISBN-10 0878550747 ISBN-13 978-0878550746 page 300

This is still the most complete source on War Against Batista in Cuba 1956-1958 that I know of; although it misses much of the last phases of the war in Oriente Province (for that you will have to consult other works such as Daley,L (manuscript in progress) "Narrations of War in Cuba". A great source for details on this conflict, and unlike the Cuban government sources is even handed and factual. It also reads well, take for instance this excerpt found on page 300:


"Colonel Cornelio Rojas, who commanded the position, fought bravely with police and army officers and troops. Roberto Rodríguez ("El Vaquerito"), a rebel officer, died leading on assault. Colonel Rojas stood firmly against succeeding waves of attack by the rebels, and forced the guerrillas to fall back to re-organize their forces. Shortly afternoon, Colonel Rojas counterattacked and succeeded in pushing the rebels out of their positions, but then a rebel counterattack forced him to retreat. The house-to-house fighting forced his exhausted troops to return to the police station after they ran short of ammunition. Colonel Rojas issued orders to fight to the last man. The rebels made three more attempts to dislodge the colonel and were repulsed each time. Towards the end, the colonel and his men were surrounded by reinforcements from Guevara, the DR and the urban underground. Even though no help came from the army (the regular troops refused to leave the Leoncio Vidal Camp) colonel Rojas kept on fighting and was the last man captured, when he ran out of ammunition. Still, he escaped his escort momentarily, joining a group of police officers and trying to regroup other regular troops. He was surrounded again by rebels, captured, and placed under the custody of a full squad of rebel soldiers. Colonel Rojas was later summarily tried, and sentenced to die before a firing squad. Rojas asked and was granted permission to lead his execution squad, and his last words were, "Muchachos, now you have your Revolution, don't lose it."

This book provides a very interesting critique of the successes and failures of the Cuban revolution from an Anarchist perspective. In this book we learn how the Cuban people have been deprived of their political freedom. In addition, Dolgoff points out how the people are largely marginalized from making decisions in the workplace, and how the workforce is just as demoralized as the oppressed masses in many capilatist societies. This is a rare book. It's a must-read.

The Cuban Revolution: Years Of Promise is an insightfully co-authored historical documentation of Cuba's revolutionary strive for independence from an undesired government by Teo A Babùn (frequent guest commentator with CBS, CNN, CNBC, CBN, the BBC, and the German Television Network. National executive director of ECHO-Cuba) & Victor Andrès Triay (Cuban-American Historian at Middlesex Community College and acclaimed author). Delving deep into the previously unseen terrain of the Cuban revolutionaries, The Cuban Revolution reveals sights and insights never before released for an eye-opening and educational affect. The Cuban Revolution is very highly recommended to all non-specialist general readers, particularly though to readers with an interest in the firsthand happenings of the Cuban Revolution.