A comprehensive history of crime and corruption in Cuba, The Cuban Connection challenges the common view that widespread poverty and geographic proximity to the United States were the prime reasons for soaring rates of drug trafficking, smuggling, gambling, and prostitution in the tumultuous decades preceding the Cuban revolution. Eduardo Saenz Rovner argues that Cuba's historically well-established integration into international migration, commerce, and transportation networks combined with political instability and rampant official corruption to help lay the foundation for the development of organized crime structures powerful enough to affect Cuba's domestic and foreign politics and its very identity as a nation. Saenz traces the routes taken around the world by traffickers and smugglers. After Cuba, the most important player in this story is the United States. The involvement of gangsters and corrupt U.S. officials and businessmen enabled prohibited substances to reach a strong market in the United States, from rum running during Prohibition to increased demand for narcotics during the Cold War. Originally published in Colombia in 2005, this first English-language edition has been revised and updated by the author.

THE MAN: Has Juan Martianos taken the phrase, "What can you do for your country?" to the extreme? How does a patriotic, Cuban sugar cane plantation owner end up in America as a high-ranking comrade in the A.C.P., and just how far will he go for the love of his country? THE COUNTRY: Beginning with marauding pirates, fierce Spanish conquistadors, greedy American capitalists, corrupt tyrants and Communists--at what price does the "Jewel of the Antilles," a beautiful, vibrant, but hostile country, whose motto is "Homeland or Death," get robbed time, after time, of its freedom? THE OPERATION: Masterminded by a man who is himself an orphan, how does an American-based orphanage, housing Cuban refugee boys, perform acts of treason against the powerful U.S.? THE CHILDREN: In a country whose advertised slogan is "Nada de muy importante de nino," - why must children pay for their fathers' sins? Meet Sara Martin, the beautiful daughter who is about to become entangled in the tumultuous, parallel relationship between Cuba and the United States.

It's New Year's Eve 1958, and Fidel Castro has mobilized his forces for the long-awaited overthrow of the Cuban government, precipitating a chain of events that will alter an eight-year-old boy's life forever. Being the son of one of the richest men in Cuba, young Miguel Fuentes has lived a life of unrivaled luxury. Shortly after midnight, his ideal world is shattered and he is eventually taken off the island to the perceived safety of the United States. Twenty years later, the young boy resurfaces as a deadly assassin for hire, known only as "El Niño," whose mercenary services are doled out to the highest bidder. Lance Almond, a loner, is a deep-cover CIA agent who prefers to work solo, and has "eliminated" more targets than he cares to remember. When recruited for his next assignment by the director himself, he suddenly realizes that it will be one of the deadliest challenges of his career. Not only that, he is informed that he will not be doing the job alone. Kate Beckett is an up-and-coming star in the New York field office of the FBI, determined to break the glass ceiling imposed on her by a male-dominated law enforcement agency. She doesn't care who she has to work with, as long as she gets promoted to a field office of her own. Or does she? Find out if the two agents will be able to work together to foil one of the most sinister assassination plots ever conceived in this fast-paced storyline filled with intriguing plot twists that keeps the reader guessing to the very end.

“Impressive . . . [Cristina García’s] story is about three generations of Cuban women and their separate responses to the revolution. Her special feat is to tell it in a style as warm and gentle as the ‘sustaining aromas of vanilla and almond,’ as rhythmic as the music of Beny Moré.”—Time Cristina García’s acclaimed book is the haunting, bittersweet story of a family experiencing a country’s revolution and the revelations that follow. The lives of Celia del Pino and her husband, daughters, and grandchildren mirror the magical realism of Cuba itself, a landscape of beauty and poverty, idealism and corruption. Dreaming in Cuban is “a work that possesses both the intimacy of a Chekov story and the hallucinatory magic of a novel by Gabriel García Márquez” (The New York Times). In celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the novel’s original publication, this edition features a new introduction by the author. Praise for Dreaming in Cuban “Remarkable . . . an intricate weaving of dramatic events with the supernatural and the cosmic . . . evocative and lush.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Captures the pain, the distance, the frustrations and the dreams of these family dramas with a vivid, poetic prose.”—The Washington Post “Brilliant . . . With tremendous skill, passion and humor, García just may have written the definitive story of Cuban exiles and some of those they left behind.”—The Denver Post

Set in New York and Havana during 1960, The Cuban Connection introduces ace reporter Katherine O'Connor, who has a nose for news and an inclination to use it in very dangerous places. Working undercover in Castro's Cuba, she gets a little too up-close-and-personal with Castro's thugs, a priest who may be working for the CIA, and a little boy whose survival is mysteriously linked to the welfare of Katherine's own mother-not to mention falling for a man who may be a Soviet spy. The Cuban Connection incorporates actual historical events into a page-turning tale that is by turns riveting, poignant, and hilarious-not unlike Katherine O'Connor herself. M.L. Malcolm is the author of two previous novels, Heart of Lies and Heart of Deception, both published by Harper Collins.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN HISTORY “Full of…lively insights and lucid prose” (The Wall Street Journal) an epic, sweeping history of Cuba and its complex ties to the United States—from before the arrival of Columbus to the present day—written by one of the world’s leading historians of Cuba. 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 “important” (The Guardian) and moving chronicle that demands a new reckoning with both the island’s past and its relationship with the United States. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History provides us with a front-row seat as we witness 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 sometimes surprising, often troubled intimacy between the two countries, documenting not only the influence of the United States on Cuba but also 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; “readers will close [this] fascinating book with a sense of hope” (The Economist). 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.

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.

Details the connections between the CIA and organized crime in Cuba in the late 1950s, exploring the root of the U.S.'s hostility toward the nation and how that set the stage for the Cuban missile crisis and JFK's assassination.