The NPR reporter offers an “engaging and enlightening” window into late-90s Cuba, “from the cafes in Havana to the mysterious lairs of Santiago de Cuba” (Kirkus Reviews). For NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu, reporting from Cuba on the eve of Pope John Paul II’s 1998 visit was an opportunity to understand the realities of life in a country that has long been the subject of stereotypes and misconceptions. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba was the last place to witness a “laboratory of pre-post-communism,” as it toed the line between its socialist past and its uncertain future. On the streets of Havana and the beaches of Santiago de Cuba, Codrescu met people from all walks of life—from prostitutes and fortunetellers to bureaucrats and writers—eager to share their stories. Uncensored and compassionate, his interviews reveal a world where destruction and beauty, poverty and pride exist side by side. Traveling with photographer David Graham, whose powerful images illustrate the energy pulsing through everyday life in Cuba, Codrescu captures the humanity of a nation that is lost when it’s reduced to a political symbol. With the United States resuming relations with Cuba for the first time in decades, Ay, Cuba! is more relevant now than ever before.

Sensuous, exotic, gritty, contradictory -- Cuba in all its glory In Ay,Cuba!, Andrei Codrescu and David Graham seek the heart and soul of this island ninety miles off the Florida coast and yet a world away. Carousing with Cuban prostitutes, intellectuals, hustlers, and laborers, Codrescu and Graham combine edgy narratives with stunning color photography to create a daring and compelling travelogue. Exploring the architecture, the bizarre two-tier economy of peso and dollar, revivals of both Catholicism and the Afro-Cuban religion of santeria, and the sexual and social mores of a post-cold war communist society, Ay,Cuba! uncovers the maddening and seductive complexities of this fiercely proud yet deeply divided society. This is a provocative look behind the headlines at a world both familiar and exotic.

In the mid-nineteenth century, some of Cuba's most influential writers settled in U.S. cities and published a variety of newspapers, pamphlets, and books. Collaborating with military movements known as filibusters, this generation of exiled writers create

From revolution to embargo, from the charms of old Havana to aquamarine seas and powdery beaches, from the hypnotic rhythms of Afro-Caribbean music to resilient, proud locals, "Travelers' Tales Cuba" burns with stories of Cuba's intriguing past and vibrant present.

A collection of essays that explore a wide range of topics related to Cuban politics, economics, foreign policy, social transformation, and culture in the post-Soviet era.

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.

Many fall for Cuba's music, its dance, the enduring strength and charm of its people. Award-winning actor Lee Brooks fell for one of its women. But how to pluck this forbidden fruit away from the so-called island frozen in time, where even romance can be illegal? Out-foxing the Castro regime's state military apparatus, only to be forced into a shady web of human smugglers and a months-long limbo at sea, Brooks and his Cuban princess show that not only does love conquer all, but that when it comes to Cuba, fact is often much wilder than any kind of fiction. Stealing Castro's Daughter is a tour de force of adventure romance set against the lush tapestry of Caribbean's crown jewel, at one of the most important junctures of the island's rich history. Surrounded by poverty, struggle and sacrifice, this is the real Cuba, and two people's real determination to overcome the odds and escape into love's lasting embrace. With its gritty hairpin turns, heartfelt honesty and sensual prose, Brooks captures the aching beauty of Cuba, and a desire that defies all obstacles. Read and be awed. Ben Corbett: Author of This is Cuba

Since Columbus arrived in 1492 and called Cuba “the most beautiful country that human eyes have ever seen,” few places on earth have evoked such passion. The thirty-one writers in Cuba in Mind offer ample proof of the fascinations that have lured generations of travelers. In this richly varied anthology of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, we hear from such famous visitors as Anthony Trollope, Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway, and Graham Greene. Poets and journalists offer their responses, from Allen Ginsberg and Jayne Cortez to Alma Guillermoprieto and Robert Stone; and novelists weigh in with such fictional portrayals as Elmore Leonard’s Cuba Libre and Pico Iyer’s Cuba and the Night. Cuban exiles, immigrants, and their offspring provide their unique perspective, from Cristina García’s essay “Simple Life” to excerpts from Oscar Hijuelos’s novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love and from Carlos Eire’s memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana. Embracing salsa and santeria, politics and baseball, the island’s sparkling beaches and the teeming Havana streets, Cuba in Mind captures the vibrancy, the contradictions, the heat and the humor of Cuba as shown by some of the best writers in the English language. Contributors: Thomas Barbour • José Barreiro • Ruth Behar • William Cullen Bryant • Jayne Cortez • Stephen Crane • Andrei Codrescu • Eleanor Early • Carlos Eire • Kimi Eisele • Cristina García • Allen Ginsberg • Graham Greene • Alma Guillermoprieto • Elizabeth Hanly • Ernest Hemingway • Consuelo Hermer • Oscar Hijuelos • Langston Hughes • Pico Iyer • Elmore Leonard • Rosa Lowinger • Marjorie May • Tom Miller • Holly Morris • Ricardo Pau-Llosa • Robert Stone • Jim Shepard • Isadora Tattlin • Anthony Trollope • Walter D. Wilcox

First Published in 2016. If scholarship on Cuban studies after the 1959 revolution focused on the historical and cultural aspects of the construction of a socialist order, the post-1989 crisis of socialism in Central and Eastern Europe raised questions about the island’s state as a socialist model. The scholarly gaze gradually began to focus on possibilities for alternative transformations at various levels of social life rather than on the deepening of traditional twentieth-century state socialism. This volume explores the newly emergent themes and debates about Cuban society and history.

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.