On January 26, 1976, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau became the first leader of a NATO country to visit Cuba since the crippling 1960 American economic embargo. Accompanied by his wife, Margaret, and baby Michel, Trudeau was greeted in Havana by 250,000 cheering Cubans and a 30-foot poster of himself. “Long live Prime Minister Fidel Castro!” Trudeau would famously shout at the love-in. In this fascinating portrait of an unusual relationship between two enigmatic world leaders, author and historian Robert Wright brings to life three days of Canadian politics played out on the international stage. In a revealing look at both leaders’ personalities and political ideologies, Wright shows how these two towering figures—despite their official positions as allies of rival empires—determinedly refused to exist merely as handmaidens to the United States and forged a long-lasting relationship.

In modern-day Havana, the remnants of the glamorous past are everywhere—old hotel-casinos, vintage American cars & flickering neon signs speak of a bygone era that is widely familiar & often romanticized, but little understood. In Havana Nocturne, T.J. English offers a multifaceted true tale of organized crime, political corruption, roaring nightlife, revolution & international conflict that interweaves the dual stories of the Mob in Havana & the event that would overshadow it, the Cuban Revolution. As the Cuban people labored under a violently repressive regime throughout the 50s, Mob leaders Meyer Lansky & Charles "Lucky" Luciano turned their eye to Havana. To them, Cuba was the ultimate dream, the greatest hope for the future of the US Mob in the post-Prohibition years of intensified government crackdowns. But when it came time to make their move, it was Lansky, the brilliant Jewish mobster, who reigned supreme. Having cultivated strong ties with the Cuban government & in particular the brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista, Lansky brought key mobsters to Havana to put his ambitious business plans in motion. Before long, the Mob, with Batista's corrupt government in its pocket, owned the biggest luxury hotels & casinos in Havana, launching an unprecedented tourism boom complete with the most lavish entertainment, the world's biggest celebrities, the most beautiful women & gambling galore. But their dreams collided with those of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara & others who would lead the country's disenfranchised to overthrow their corrupt government & its foreign partners—an epic cultural battle that English captures in all its sexy, decadent, ugly glory. Bringing together long-buried historical information with English's own research in Havana—including interviews with the era's key survivors—Havana Nocturne takes readers back to Cuba in the years when it was a veritable devil's playground for mob leaders. English deftly weaves together the parallel stories of the Havana Mob—featuring notorious criminals such as Santo Trafficante Jr & Albert Anastasia—& Castro's 26th of July Movement in a riveting, up-close look at how the Mob nearly attained its biggest dream in Havana—& how Fidel Castro trumped it all with the revolution.

In power for forty-four years and counting, Fidel Castro has done everything possible to define Cuba to the world and to itself -- yet not even he has been able to control the thoughts and dreams of his people. Those thoughts and dreams are the basis for what may become a post-Castro Cuba. To more fully understand the future of America's near neighbor, veteran reporter Eugene Robinson knew exactly where to look -- or rather, to listen. In this provocative work, Robinson takes us on a sweaty, pulsating, and lyrical tour of a country on the verge of revolution, using its musicians as a window into its present and future. Music is the mother's milk of Cuban culture. Cubans express their fondest hopes, their frustrations, even their political dissent, through music. Most Americans think only of salsa and the Buena Vista Social Club when they think of the music of Cuba, yet those styles are but a piece of a broad musical spectrum. Just as the West learned more about China after the Cultural Revolution by watching From Mao to Mozart, so will readers discover the real Cuba -- the living, breathing, dying, yet striving Cuba. Cuban music is both wildly exuberant and achingly melancholy. A thick stew of African and European elements, it is astoundingly rich and influential to have come from such a tiny island. From rap stars who defy the government in their lyrics to violinists and pianists who attend the world's last Soviet-style conservatory to international pop stars who could make millions abroad yet choose to stay and work for peanuts, Robinson introduces us to unforgettable characters who happily bring him into their homes and backstage discussions. Despite Castro's attempts to shut down nightclubs, obstruct artists, and subsidize only what he wants, the musicians and dancers of Cuba cannot stop, much less behave. Cubans move through their complicated lives the way they move on the dance floor, dashing and darting and spinning on a dime, seducing joy and fulfillment and next week's supply of food out of a broken system. Then at night they take to the real dance floors and invent fantastic new steps. Last Dance in Havana is heartwrenching, yet ultimately as joyous and hopeful as a rocking club late on a Saturday night.

A HELLO SUNSHINE x REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK "A beautiful novel that's full of forbidden passions, family secrets and a lot of courage and sacrifice."--Reese Witherspoon After the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity--and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution... Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba's high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country's growing political unrest--until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary... Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother Elisa, who was forced to flee with her family during the revolution. Elisa's last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth. Arriving in Havana, Marisol comes face-to-face with the contrast of Cuba's tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. When more family history comes to light and Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she'll need the lessons of her grandmother's past to help her understand the true meaning of courage.

A survivor of the Cuban Revolution recounts his pre-war childhood as the religiously devout son of a judge, and describes the conflict's violent and irrevocable impact on his friends, family, and native home.

Penned during the transition of power from Fidel Castro to Raúl Castro, Our Place in the Sun explores the Canadian-Cuban relationship from 1959 to the present day. The essays in this volume reflect upon the past but also explore the internal issues and external forces that will continue to influence the Canada-Cuba association in the years to come. Many of this volume's contributors draw upon newly declassified sources and original interviews, providing unique insight into the historical, economic, and political realities affecting the Canada-Cuba connection. Featuring twelve original essays by a variety of scholars as well as a short memoir by former Canadian Ambassador to Cuba, Mark Entwistle, this important interdisciplinary collection calls into question past understandings of the Canadian-Cuban relationship. It is a must-read for anyone interested in Canadian and Cuban history of the last half-century, and the dynamics of North American politics more broadly.

From the Publisher: Centering around the recollections of a man separated both from his country and his youth, Cabrera Infante creates a vision of life and the many colorful characters found in steamy Havana's pre-Castro cabaret society.

Banned in Cuba but celebrated throughout the Spanish-speaking world, this picaresque novel in stories chronicles the misadventures of Pedro Juan, a former Cuban journalist living from hand to mouth in the squalor of contemporary Havana, half disgusted and half fascinated by the depths to which he has sunk. Like the lives of so many of his neighbors in the crumbling, once-elegant apartment houses that line Havana's waterfront, Pedro Juan's days and nights have been reduced by the so-called special times -- the harsh recession that followed the Soviet Union's collapse -- to the struggle of surviving the daily grit through the escapist pursuit of sex. Pedro Juan scrapes by under the shadow of hunger -- all the while observing his lovers and friends, strangers on the street, and their suffering with an unsentimental, mocking, yet sympathetic eye.

With more than seventy mouthwatering recipes, this vibrant memoir by food writer Viviana Carballo shares the Havana of her childhood -- warm nights, pounding surf, energetic music, and the memorable meals that both nourished and delighted her and her family throughout the years. In the 1940s and 1950s, at the height of government corruption, Havana was a nonstop party. Food and music defined the culture, and the pervading sensuality -- the physical beauty of the city itself with its frisson of danger -- made it a magnet for tourists, gangsters, and the world's most glamorous celebrities. This was the Cuba of Viviana Carballo's magical childhood and adventurous adolescence. Born in 1939, she was the only child of a stylish and spirited woman and a handsome astrologer and writer, whose passion for food ignited Carballo's own taste for the exotic, eclectic cuisine for which Havana had become known. By the time she reached her teenage years, sultry nights dancing at the Tropicana and rubbing elbows with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Meyer Lansky, and Guillermo Cabrera Infante nourished her hunger for the rhythm and creativity pulsating throughout her beloved city. But all of that changed in 1959, when Fidel Castro took command of this rollicking paradise, turning it into a country marked by extreme poverty, food shortages, power outages, and daily water stoppages. In 1961, Carballo left her beloved country with the clothes on her back and no idea when she would ever see her husband, family, or friends again. It is only through her memories that she has ever returned to the place that defined her. Havana Salsa is a collection of stories about her large, extended family, a rather eccentric group who conducted their lives against the extraordinary backdrop of Havana, and of her own experiences amid the city's former delicious decadence. It also showcases the food and recipes Carballo associates with each delightful family memory, beginning with her childhood in the forties (calabaza fritters, sweet plantain tortillas, and oxtail stew), through the sensual fifties (roast shoulder of lamb, Cuban bouillabaisse), and then the first eighteen months of Castro's revolution (mango pie, pollito en cazuela, and papas with chorizo). Havana Salsa tells the history of Carballo's Havana as only she can -- through the intimate and unifying experience of food, family, and friends.