The Buendia Family had it all going for them. The patriarch of the family, an accomplished university professor, and his loving wife had created a paradise under the palm trees of glamorous Havana with its incessant nightlife. Little did they know that their world of comfort and luxury would come crashing down. This family story framed by the turbulent Havana of the 1950s is a tour de force for anyone interested in the evolution of Cuba as the playground of the Americas.

Bugliosi, brilliant prosecutor and bestselling author, is perhaps the only man in America capable of "prosecuting" Lee Harvey Oswald for the murder of John F. Kennedy. His book is a narrative compendium of fact, ballistic evidence, and, above all, common sense.

Cuba is often perceived in starkly black and white terms—either as the site of one of Latin America’s most successful revolutions or as the bastion of the world’s last communist regime. The Cuba Reader multiplies perspectives on the nation many times over, presenting more than one hundred selections about Cuba’s history, culture, and politics. Beginning with the first written account of the island, penned by Christopher Columbus in 1492, the selections assembled here track Cuban history from the colonial period through the ascendancy of Fidel Castro to the present. The Cuba Reader combines songs, paintings, photographs, poems, short stories, speeches, cartoons, government reports and proclamations, and pieces by historians, journalists, and others. Most of these are by Cubans, and many appear for the first time in English. The writings and speeches of José Martí, Fernando Ortiz, Fidel Castro, Alejo Carpentier, Che Guevera, and Reinaldo Arenas appear alongside the testimonies of slaves, prostitutes, doctors, travelers, and activists. Some selections examine health, education, Catholicism, and santería; others celebrate Cuba’s vibrant dance, music, film, and literary cultures. The pieces are grouped into chronological sections. Each section and individual selection is preceded by a brief introduction by the editors. The volume presents a number of pieces about twentieth-century Cuba, including the events leading up to and following Castro’s January 1959 announcement of revolution. It provides a look at Cuba in relation to the rest of the world: the effect of its revolution on Latin America and the Caribbean, its alliance with the Soviet Union from the 1960s until the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, and its tumultuous relationship with the United States. The Cuba Reader also describes life in the periodo especial following the cutoff of Soviet aid and the tightening of the U.S. embargo. For students, travelers, and all those who want to know more about the island nation just ninety miles south of Florida, The Cuba Reader is an invaluable introduction.

THIS warm, sometimes funny, and deeply emotional memoir tells what it was like growing up more than half a century ago in pre-Castro Cuba. Roberto López recounts a very personal story of family, school experiences, and friendships. He relates what it was like to be Cuban and what Cuba—in those days—looked and felt like: the streets of old Havana and his lively neighborhood where streetcars were so crowded passengers might have to climb on top, where peddlers plied everything from fish to sweets, and where men gathered in the bodegas to play dice on shiny mahogany counters while drinking beer or downing cup after cup of hot, black, sweet, and wickedly strong coffee. López wrote Island of Memory primarily as a tribute to a people and a place but he also tells what it was like when things ruptured—when the communists took over— and made it impossible for him to stay, or to return.