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Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know |  | Author: Julia E Sweig
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $6.99
as of 7/31/2010 08:12 CDT details
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Seller: mckenziebooks
Rating:  14 reviews
Media: Paperback
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 019538380X
Dewey Decimal Number: 972.91064
EAN: 9780195383805
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9780195383805 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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Product Description
Ever since Fidel Castro assumed power in Cuba in 1959, Americans have obsessed about the nation ninety miles south of the Florida Keys. America's fixation on the tropical socialist republic has only grown over the years, fueled in part by successive waves of Cuban immigration and Castro's larger-than-life persona. Cubans are now a major ethnic group in Florida, and the exile community is so powerful that every American president has kowtowed to it. But what do most Americans really know about Cuba itself?
In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia Sweig, one of America's leading experts on Cuba and Latin America, presents a concise and remarkably accessible portrait of the small island nation's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years. Yet it is authoritative as well. Following a scene-setting introduction that describes the dynamics unleashed since summer 2006 when Fidel Castro transferred provisional power to his brother Raul, the book looks backward toward Cuba's history since the Spanish American War before shifting to more recent times. Focusing equally on Cuba's role in world affairs and its own social and political transformations, Sweig divides the book chronologically into the pre-Fidel era, the period between the 1959 revolution and the fall of the Soviet Union, the post-Cold War era, and-finally-the looming post-Fidel era.
Informative, pithy, and lucidly written, it will serve as the best compact reference on Cuba's internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
 Terrific guide to rediscovering Cuba July 4, 2009
Ken Buckingham (Chicago, Ill USA)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
If visiting Cuba to see more than vintage American cars is appealing, you can rely on expert Julia Sweig's new, most timely book, Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know. Sweig's long established knowledge of Cuba together with her fun, familiar, voice-filled writing style makes this the bible for rediscovery of Cuba as the US gradually opens up the embargo-burdened bogeyman 90 miles to the South.
A Home Run July 5, 2009
Sylvia Bolero (Arcata, CA United States)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Cuba,What Everyone Needs to Know is just that - what we all need to know about Cuba to be fully educated about the country, its history, its relationship with the US, and why it matters. Julia Sweig's writing is thoroughly accessible, making the subject compelling, alive, and relevant. She's given us an utterly balanced look at history and the issues. Her expertise is of the highest caliber. For anyone interested in Cuba, this book is a must.
page turner July 24, 2009
Elizabeth Rose (Washington, DC)
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
I just finished this wonderful book (CUBA What Everyone Needs to Know) and I LOVED it. Ms. Sweig is a gifted writer: this book reads like fiction. Really, the book is a page turner. I learned a great deal, but it was painless -- not like an assigned reading at all. I would highly recommend CUBA What Everyone Needs to Know to students who want to learn about Cuba as well as to folks who are just looking for a good read. I read at least one American newspaper a day (usually the Washington Post) and I did not know most of the information in the book. For example, did you know that on 911 the Cuban government "privately offered to open its airfields for American planes to land there and offered medical teams to assist with the disaster and recovery."(see p. 181) I had no idea. Thumbs up for this great book.
This may well be the best book on Cuba I've ever read July 5, 2009
Rifka Sanchez (Miami, FL, USA)
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
What an unbelievable book this is. I bought it seen Dr. Sweig all over television over the past year. She comes across as one of the smartest, most charismatic talking heads on foreign policy I've seen in a generation. Her book, Cuba: What Everyone Needs To Know, is every bit as compelling. It manages to be accessible yet erudite, sweeping yet detailed, and conversational yet profound. Whether you are a Cuban history buff or want to give a friend with little knowledge of Cuba the primer of all primers, this is the book to get. I'm blown away.
CUBA. What Everyone Needs to Know by Julia E. Sweig August 3, 2009
Jacqueline Barnitz
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
Easily one of the best studies of Cuba and its cultural scene to come out in the last few years. It gives a very well documented historical background that goes back to the nineteenth century tracing the path of Cuban history from its liberation from Spain with United States help, and the poet and activist Jose Marti to the present and the Castro brothers. Rather than defend one side or another of the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s, Sweig offers a well balanced analysis of all the factors in what amounts to the most objective study I have yet read. It carefully documents United States involvement and interests in Cuba without prejudice. Readers should come away from this book with a clearer understanding of the complexities of Cuban politics and its relations with the rest of the world, not just Russia and the U.S.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
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