Caribbean & West Indies Books

One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

Michael Dobbs

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Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union appeared to be sliding inexorably toward a nuclear conflict over the placement of missiles in Cuba. Veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has pored over previously untapped American, Soviet, and Cuban sources to produce the most authoritative book yet on the Cuban missile crisis. In his hour-by-hour chronicle of those near-fatal days, Dobbs reveals some startling new incidents that illustrate how close we came to Armageddon.

Here, for the first time, are gripping accounts of Khrushchev’s plan to destroy the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo; the accidental overflight of the Soviet Union by an American spy plane; the movement of Soviet nuclear warheads around Cuba during the tensest days of the crisis; the activities of CIA agents inside Cuba; and the crash landing of an American F-106 jet with a live nuclear weapon on board.

Dobbs takes us inside the White House and the Kremlin as Kennedy and Khrushchev—rational, intelligent men separated by an ocean of ideological suspicion—agonize over the possibility of war. He shows how these two leaders recognized the terrifying realities of the nuclear age while Castro—never swayed by conventional political considerations—demonstrated the messianic ambition of a man selected by history for a unique mission. As the story unfolds, Dobbs brings us onto the decks of American ships patrolling Cuba; inside sweltering Soviet submarines and missile units as they ready their warheads; and onto the streets of Miami, where anti-Castro exiles plot the dictator’s overthrow.

Based on exhaustive new research and told in breathtaking prose, here is a riveting account of history’s most dangerous hours, full of lessons for our time.

Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It to the Revolution

T. J. English

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Total reviews: 41 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

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In modern-day Havana, the remnants of the glamorous past are everywhere—the old hotel-casinos, vintage American cars, and flickering neon signs speak of a bygone era that is widely familiar and often romanticized, but little understood. In Havana Nocturne, T. J. English offers a riveting, multifaceted true tale of organized crime, political corruption, roaring nightlife, revolution, and international conflict that interweaves the dual stories of the Mob in Havana and the event that would overshadow it, the Cuban Revolution.

As the Cuban people labored under a violently repressive regime throughout the 1950s, Mob leaders Meyer Lansky and Charles "Lucky" Luciano turned their eye to Havana. To them, Cuba was the ultimate dream, the greatest hope for the future of the American 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 and 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 and casinos in Havana, launching an unprecedented tourism boom complete with the most lavish entertainment, the world's biggest celebrities, the most beautiful women, and gambling galore. But their dreams collided with those of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and others who would lead the country's disenfranchised to overthrow their corrupt government and 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. and Albert Anastasia—and Castro's 26th of July Movement in a riveting, up-close look at how the Mob nearly attained its biggest dream in Havana—and how Fidel Castro trumped it all with the Cuban Revolution.

Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in Their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom--and Revenge

Edward Kritzler

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

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At the end of the fifteenth century, the Spanish Inquisition forced many Jews to flee the country. The most adventurous among them took to the high seas as freewheeling outlaws. In ships bearing names such as the Prophet Samuel, Queen Esther, and Shield of Abraham, they attacked and plundered the Spanish fleet while forming alliances with other European powers to ensure the safety of Jews living in hiding.

JEWISH PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN is the entertaining saga of a hidden chapter in Jewish history and of the cruelty, terror, and greed that flourished during the Age of Discovery. Readers will meet such daring figures as “the Great Jewish Pirate” Sinan, Barbarossa’s second-in-command; the pirate rabbi Samuel Palache, who founded Holland's Jewish community; Abraham Cohen Henriques, an arms dealer who used his cunning and economic muscle to find safe havens for other Jews; and his pirate brother Moses, who is credited with the capture of the Spanish silver fleet in 1628--the largest heist in pirate history.

Filled with high-sea adventures—including encounters with Captain Morgan and other legendary pirates—and detailed portraits of cities stacked high with plunder, such as Port Royal, Jamaica, JEWISH PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN captures a gritty and glorious era of history from an unusual and eye-opening perspective.

Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause

Tom Gjelten

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

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A unique history of Cuba, captured in the life and times of the famous rum dynasty

The Bacardis of Cuba, builders of a rum distillery and a worldwide brand, came of age with their nation and helped define what it meant to be Cuban. Across five generations, the Bacardi family has held fast to its Cuban identity, even in exile from the country for whose freedom they once fought. Now National Public Radio correspondent Tom Gjelten tells the dramatic story of one family, its business, and its nation, a 150-year tale with the sweep and power of an epic.

The Bacardi clan--patriots and bon vivants, entrepreneurs and intellectuals--provided an example of business and civic leadership in its homeland for nearly a century. From the fight for Cuban independence from Spain in the 1860s to the rise of Fidel Castro and beyond, there is no chapter in Cuban history in which the Bacardis have not played a role. In chronicling the saga of this remarkable family and the company that bears its name, Tom Gjelten describes the intersection of business and power, family and politics, community and exile.

Havana Before Castro

Peter Moruzzi

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Featuring hundreds of vintage photographs, postcards, brochures, and other materials evocative of time and place, Havana Before Castro: When Cuba Was a Tropical Playground documents how the city of Havana evolved from Prohibition haven and rich man's playground to a heady blend of glittering nightclubs, outrageous cabarets, all-night bars, and backstreet brothels. Here, captured in one amazing book, is the drama, passion, intrigue, and opulence of a legendary city during its heyday-before the Castro dictatorship re-imagined the country and Americans were banned from travel to this tropical paradise.
An architectural historian by profession, Peter Moruzzi is an acknowledged expert on mid-century Modern architecture and design. He is the founder of the Palm Springs Modern Committee, an internationally recognized historic preservation organization, and the writer/director of Desert Holiday, a documentary film chronicling the history of Palm Springs as seen through vintage postcards. He resides in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles and in Palm Springs.
(20080515)

The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down

Colin Woodard

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Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

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Welcome to the Pirate Republic—the early-eighteenth-century home to some of the great pirate captains, including Blackbeard, "Black Sam" Bellamy, and Charles Vane. Along with their fellow pirates—former sailors, indentured servants, and runaway slaves—this "Flying Gang" established a crude but distinctive democracy in the Bahamas, carving out their own zone of freedom in which servants were free, blacks could be equal citizens, and leaders were chosen or deposed by a vote.

For a brief, glorious period the Pirate Republic was enormously successful. It cut off trade routes, sacked slave ships, and severed Europe from its New World empires. Imperial authorities and wealthy shipowners denounced its residents as the enemies of mankind, but common people saw them as heroes. Colin Woodard tells the dramatic untold story of the Pirate Republic that shook the very foundations of the British and Spanish Empires and fanned the democratic sentiments that would one day drive the American Revolution.

Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Robert F. Kennedy

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Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

AS WE APPROACH IN HALF A YEAR THE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS FBI ASSASSINATION LET US RECALL WHEN WISDOM AND DIPLOMACY RULED 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Here we have in Robert Kennedy's own account how the world kept out of annihilating nuclear warfare nearly a half century ago, rather than the current highly profitable rushes to war with untold, uncounted millions of innocent victims these past few decades.

Here we can read how true, wise, competent and democratically elected national leaders kept us out of war, Averting 'The Final Failure': John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings (Stanford Nuclear Age Series).

The only lamentable sectio of this chronicle may be, as ever, Schlesinger's introduction. The rest let us read and pray once more for leaders of peace and morality, not of corrupt as profitable war-mongering.

There are several accounts of those thirteen days, and films. Let us best begin with this book.

Editorial Review:

The unique, gripping account of the perilous showdown between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the thirteen days in October 1962 when the United States confronted the Soviet Union over its installation of missiles in Cuba, few people shared the behind-the-scenes story as it is told here by the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy. In a clear and simple record, he describes the personalities involved in the crisis, with particular attention to the actions and attitudes of his brother, President John F. Kennedy. He describes the daily, even hourly, exchanges between Russian representatives and American. In firsthand immediacy we see the frightening responsibility of two great nations holding the fate of the world in their hands.

Brothers in Arms: The Kennedys, the Castros, and the Politics of Murder

Gus Russo, Stephen Molton

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

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A groundbreaking new reporting of the historical drama linking the Kennedys and the Castros that sheds new light on the JFK assassination.

Using breakthrough reporting and interviews with long-silent sources, Russo and coauthor Stephen Molton have crafted a dramatic retelling of the time before, during, and after the Kennedy killing. The book centers on the two opposed sets of brothers—the Kennedys and the Castros—who collectively authored one of modern history’s most dangerous, and tragically ironic, chapters. Bobby Kennedy pushed for the murder of Fidel Castro and instead got the death of his beloved brother, a psychic blow from which he himself never recovered. Lee Harvey Oswald killed an admired president and traumatized a nation, but in so doing may have prevented a third world war.

Built on thirty years of intense research—including discoveries so significant that they have rekindled CIA and State Department interest in the Kennedy assassination—Brothers in Arms is a vivid, character-driven, almost cinematic narration of a singularly fascinating time. For neophytes, it is the most accessible and informed single volume on the assassination. For the many readers fascinated by this story, it provides extraordinary new facts that will force a reconsideration of how and why the Kennedy murder came to pass.

The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States, and the Next Revolution

Daniel P. Erikson

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Editorial Review:

On the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, expert Daniel Erikson explores the twilight of the Castro era and what the future has in store for America’s last Cold War enemy.

January 1, 2009 will mark a half century for a Cuban regime created and shaped by the powerful will of Fidel Castro—but the ailing leader may be gone from the scene before the anniversary arrives. The Cuba Wars explores the two crucial questions of the coming era: When Castro dies, what will happen in Cuba? And what will happen in America?

There are few international relationships that rival in intimacy, passion, and sheer tension that between the Cuba and the United States. In The Cuba Wars, Cuba expert Daniel Erikson draws on extensive visits to Cuba and conversations with both government officials and opposition leaders—plus the key players in Washington and Florida—to offer an unmatched portrait of a small country with very large importance to America.

Cuba remains "our last Cold War enemy"—now closely allied to Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela as it once was to the USSR. Yet it has quietly become a major trade partner for American agribusiness. The "next revolution" there could see Cuba become a multibillion-dollar capitalist economy—or continue as a socialist dystopia, or lapse into civil war. The Cuba Wars is the book to read to understand the present and future of Cuba.

Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign

Stephan Talty

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Shallow, poorly researched, mediocre 1 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

I picked up this book based on backcover praise (Washington Post, NY Times), but was clearly deceived. The book is mediocre, shallow and incredibly childish in its view of historic events and international politics.

What is more striking is that the author seems to have been in contact with at least some sources and historic documents to be able to put together a good quality account. However, he does very little with that information, and instead is taken overboard by his manicheistic view of things, depicting a crowd of disgrunteld murderors and thieves as emblems of some free-trade democratic ideal. He can ramble on for dozens of pages on his own hollywoodesque interpretation of pirate life in Port Royal, and then condense Morgan's first ever expedition into Mexico in a couple of pages full of gross innacuracies, such as the detour he takes in approaching Villahermosa (which goes from 300 to 3700 miles in the space of a paragraph - not a bad trek for a bunch of pirates on foot!).

The only advice I can give is: save your time and money, go look elsewhere for a good reliable book on the subject.

Editorial Review:

A May 2007 Book Sense Pick

“Talty’s vigorous history of seventeenth-century pirates of the Caribbean will sate even fickle Jack Sparrow fans. . . . A pleasure to read from bow to stern.”
—Entertainment Weekly

The passion and violence of the age of exploration and empire come to vivid life in this story of the legendary pirate who took on the greatest military power on earth with a ragtag bunch of renegades. Awash with bloody battles, political intrigues, natural disaster, and a cast of characters more compelling, bizarre, and memorable than any found in a Hollywood swashbuckler, Empire of Blue Water brilliantly re-creates the life and times of Henry Morgan and the real pirates of the Caribbean.