The author of this book takes a highly original approach to understanding the past three decades of Cuban history–he offers an analysis and interpretation of the prolific writings and speeches of Fidel Castro and of numerous interviews with him. Through Castro’s own words, Sheldon Liss examines the evolution of the Cuban leader’s political and soci

Presents the life and leadership of the Communist dictator of Cuba who has denied his people the right to vote and has imprisoned, executed, or banished those against his policies.

Few political figures of the modern age have been so vilified as Fidel Castro, and both the vilification and worship generated by the Cuban leader have combined to distort the true image of Castro. The baseball myths attached to Fidel have loomed every bit as large as the skewed political notions that surround him. Castro was never a major league pitching prospect, nor did he destroy the Cuban national pastime in 1962. In Fidel Castro and Baseball: The Untold Story, Peter C. Bjarkman dispels numerous myths about the Cuban leader and his association with baseball. In this groundbreaking study, Bjarkman establishes how Fidel constructed, rather than dismantled, Cuba’s true baseball Golden Age—one that followed rather than preceded the 1959 revolution. Bjarkman also demonstrates that Fidel was not at all unique in “politicizing” baseball as often maintained, since the island sport traces its roots to the 19th-century revolution. Fidel’s avowed devotion to a non-materialist society would ultimately sow the seeds of collapse for the baseball empire he built over more than a half-century, just as the same obsession would finally dismantle the larger social revolution he had painstakingly authored. A fascinating look at a controversial figure and his impact on a major sport, this volume reveals many intriguing insights about Castro and how his love of the game was tied to Cuba’s identity. Fidel Castro and Baseball will appeal to fans of the sport as well as to those interested in Cuba’s enduring association with baseball.

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.

The post-1959 Cuban government’s engagement with Africa, which was led by its charismatic and revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, had two connecting dimensions: military internationalism and humanitarian internationalism. While African states and societies benefited immensely from these engagements, it was Fidel Castro’s military assistance towards the decolonization of and the pushback of Apartheid South Africa that received the loudest attention and ovation in the developing world. Fidel Castro, this book argues, was never motivated by economic, selfish, or geopolitical considerations; but rather, by the altruism and the certainty of his worldview and by the historical connection between the peoples of Cuba and Africa. The principle of international solidary, socialism, and the emancipation of Africa was a much-desired aspiration and attainment. Beginning covertly in Algeria in 1961 and the Congo and Guinea-Bissau in 1964; and more conspicuously in Angola in 1975, Fidel Castro and his socialist government was at the forefront supporting liberation movements in their struggle against colonialism. Defining Castro’s engagement with Africa was his support for the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) against the United States-backed Apartheid South Africa, which supported the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).

"Mr. Lockwood's exciting book...holds many surprises for the reader who has seen the Cuban reality up to now only through the distorting prism of propaganda.... [During Mr. Lockwood's latest, 14-week visit to Cuba in 1965] he had 'a seven-day marathon conversation' with [Fidel], the transcription of which, with excellent photographs, constitutes the heart of the book.... A first-rate psychological document, this book is also an historical one in that it contains information necessary to the understanding of several conversional questions, such as the priority given agriculture in the development of the Cuban economy, the dissension between Moscow and Havana, or even the intellectual road by which Castro came to Marxism. Moreover, it provides particulars up to now unknown." Claude Julien, 'The New York Times Book Review' "Lockwood gives us crowds, posters, individual studies, Fidel in every possible mood; the cities, farms, country towns - most of Cuba is in the photographs.... Lockwood's text consists mainly of excerpts from several interviews he got from Fidel in 1965.... In one way or another Fidel touches on all the events of crucial importance from the beginning of the insurrection until 1965, and the interviews thus become an explanation of the revolution that we badly need." Jose Yglesias, 'The New Republic' "The author's questions [to Fidel] are tough and penetrating and they elicited the same kind of answers.... The lively record deserves and encourages serious study." K. G. Jackson, 'Harper's Magazine' "Given the paucity of scholarly work on contemporary Cuba and the difficulty of visiting the island, the photographs, interview materials, and interpretations of this gifted journalist must go high on the reading list of anyone, professional or lay person, who maintains a serious interest in Cuban affairs and in that most dramatic and important of twentieth-century Latin American leaders, Fidel Castro." Richard Fagan, 'Hispanic American Historical Review'

Unpardonable Crimes: The Legacy of Fidel Castro presents a series of stories that, although written as fiction, are based on real events told author Celestino Heres by his family and friends. Everyone has a story to tell, and oftentimes there is a story behind a story. Many of the events that actually occurred in Cuba prior to, during, and after the Revolution might never have been made public; this collection attempts to counteract that secrecy. The first story, From Buchenwald to Connecticut, is the story of Heress father-in-law, Raul, a jewelry manufacturer in Cuba. Bitter Victory was related to Heres by his two dearest friends, who suffered imprisonment in Castros gulag. The rest of the tales were born from the myriad conversations he had with many Cuban friends over more than forty years. As is often the case with stories of war, many stories of the Cuban people will go to the graves with the men and women who lived them, like footprints in the sand after the rising of the tide. This collection demonstrates the common threads of the struggle of Cubans to survive under the cruel oppression of Fidel Castro and Fidels betrayal of his own people.

Cuba has loomed large in American memory and history. Throughout the last half-century, the island and its larger-than-life revolutionary leader have been key players in the Cold War and mythologized by Americans and American politicians. In 2016, relations thawed, and the country opened its doors to American. The Rolling Stones played in Havana. President Obama arrived too in March. He was the first President to visit the nation almost 100 years—since Coolidge in 1928. And then Fidel Castro passed away in November 2016, marking the end of the momentous era in Cuban history. In The Day Fidel Died, Patrick Symmes interweaves reporting from years spent traveling to the Cuban Island, a narrative history of the rise of Fidelismo and the last sixty-plus years of life there under Fidel. Symmes’ exploration of the Castros’ Cuba—how it came to be and what it’s becoming—paints a wondrous and striking portrait of the nation, its culture, politics and people for anyone first undertaking a trip or those still dreaming of doing so. A Vintage Shorts ebook original.

The book makes accessible a selection of speeches and television appearances by Fidel Castro during the first two years of the Cuban Revolution. Readers can trace the evolution of this legendary leader’s radical political thought and analyze his extraordinary capacity for overcoming adverse political and ideological circumstances in a constant movement towards a socialist ideal. The work is organized chronologically with introductory presentations prepared by Cuban experts José Bell, Tania Caram and Delia Luisa López and includes a glossary and bibliography. The methodology of this work is original and includes material from 1959 not previously published elsewhere.