How can Fidel Castro make such an assertion, that capitalism is in crisis ? Having been to Cuba numberless times since 1993 until today, I have seen no other place in worse crisis than Cuba. If someone can claim that our Western capitalism is in crisis, Fidel Castro is surely not the best person to make such a claim. This book, filled with communist propaganda and Castro's old rhetoric, is a great tool for Castro to confuse those individuals who, for lack of better information or other reasons, still believe in the myth of world revolution and world socialism. The book is badly written, and I find it highly nauseating. Yet, by all means it is a book all scholars of Cuba or communism should read ! From that point of view, the book is an extremely valuable source of information on the thought (and "ideology", if you believe in such a thing) of Fidel Castro and his accolytes. But apart from that, the book is no more than expensive toilet paper, and I would not recommend it to anyone who is not working on the subject with a genuine interest in it. If you do share views close to those of Fidel Castro, there are plenty of great world academics even in the US (just think of Noam Chomsky), who are of far different calibre than Mr. Castro. Their books will never disappoint, whether or not you share those views.

Many books written by Dr. Fidel Castro are difficult if not impossible to find in the United States; I felt lucky to locate this one. It is a compilation of many speeches given in different parts of the world, and in each one Mr. Castro drives home his point that capitalism is not a viable economic structure for the longevity of mother earth or her inhabitants. He explains at length the effects of neocolonialism, the loss of culture, the abuse of natural resources, and the ever widening gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots."

This book is a collection of speeches delivered by Castro at various Cuban and international gatherings, addressing groups like the WTO and the South African parliament. It does not contain endless rhetoric and polemic, but rather an alternative point of view on the issues of globalisation and the emerging global economy. Castro's insights are worth reading, because he speaks as one outside of the system, partly because of Cuba's socialist economy, but even more so because they are closed out of the global economy by the US blocade. The book provides an useful overview of the Cuban government's understanding of these issues as well: the third chapter gives an excellent overview of Cuba and its relations with the USA and the Soviet Union from the revolution to the present day. Overall, this book is an excellent source of information for those interested in Cuban politics. Besides that, it provides useful warnings for the countries involved in globalisation and First World-Third World relations--warnings that come from a leader who, due to his forced international isolation, cannot speak out for selfish interests alone, but with a view to the good of all mankind.

We as Americans need to be aware of what is going on in other parts of the world and how we affect the people that live there. Cuba is no different and the Cuban people may very well have suffered because of socialism, but they have also suffered due to American greed and arrogance. It does not matter if you like Castro or not- the Cuban people should always be considered. This book gives us one side of the equation. The U.S. should do as well to provide health care and educational access!

the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of... of what? well, of class struggles... true... yet on what grounds are these struggles to be fought? the answer can only be ideology. Ideology is the "built in" bias in our consciousness instilled in us since we were little kids to maintain the present ruling order. This sounds horribly conspiratorial, but it really isn't. Every form of society has its own ideology; even communist society. Yet here is what sets communism apart from capitalism: it's ideology speaks for all, not for the wealthy. The history of all hitherto existing communist society has been the history of oppression just as severe as any capitalist society. It is sad, yet Marx could have predicted it. In fact, he did in the Paris manuscripts of 1844. He called it crude communism. Communism is never a means to industrialize, that is the job of capitalism. Cuba may be the only exception of this in the modern world. (the other, perhaps, being pre-stalinist Russia under NEP)

I thought I knew much about Che and Fidel. But I don't. The extent of American interventionism in Latin America is quite disturbing, shattering my illusions of "the great land of the free" we look so highly upon. These collected speeches strike at the heart of the Cuban situation. To fight against the American-backed Batista regime and then have to find a way to manage a horribly impoverished economic system has been the ever-increasing struggle for Cuba. It is a hard sell, communism in underdeveloped countries since it really isn't communism at all. Communism comes out of developed capitalism in a state of over-abundance, thus allowing for the complete freedom of all from the "realm of necessity". Still, considering the circumstances, Fidel is quite rightly looked upon with hatred by bourgeois eyes, for he is an honest humanitarian trying to give his people freedom from imperialist oppression. His egalitarian ideology opposes everything American, and these speeches shatter our illusions as to what the "land of the free" is really all about. They are gripping and really quite moving. I do not suggest anyone read these speeches if they have trouble dealing with things as they are, not as they appear to be. But for those with any amount of desire at acquiring truth, these speeches just may alter the way you see the world in which we live.

To Speak the Truth is great that it brings out the truth about the UN with its ineptness and US foreign policy. Anyone with common sense can see the truth. As an American, we must read with an OPEN MIND and see the book for what it's truely worth. Closed minded sheep need not apply.

If you've been an O'keeffe fan for a long time this book will lack of new and interesting facts about her life and art. It is a "good" book, but it works only for people that have just discovered O'keeffe's greatness.

Having always been familiar with her work, this book provided me with a good synopsis of her life and her art. The book has a good layout, and a "tasty" palette of her art and color to feed on.

I'm Cubano(I now live in Brazil) and visit my mother's house in Cuba each summer, and the Cubanos down there know the 80% of their society is damaged by US intervention in Cuba's internal and international affairs. My brother lives in Tampa Bay, Florida and when I'm down there all I hear from the Cubanos up there is how poor Cuba's economy is and how social life in Cuba is horrible and this and that. As a Cubano Im very proud of my country and its leaders(Cienfuegos, Guevara, Castro, Raul Castro, etc.). If everyone one is mad because Cuba is poor then go in front of the White House and protest to end the embargo(Helms-Burton Act), tell them to abolish the CDA(Cuban Democracy Act, instead of placing this one on the oppressive Batista dictatorship, they embraced his oppressive regime), and complain about the fact that when the UN wants to send an IDF(international development fund)the US decides to veto every single one the UN tries to send. The US knows that in this day in age they can't just send an army over to Cuba and throw out the current government(although JFK tried it with the Bay of the Pigs), so the US has basically declared a form of economic warfare on Cuba and their excuse is to change the form of government at Havana. Let's assume this is the reason why the US is placing all those acts on Cuba, but what right does the US government have to over throw another government? I remember, back in 96, when Castro shot down two planes, of Cuban exiles, flying over Cuba dropping leaflits calling people to start a revolution against the Castro regime. And the US government and exiles in Miami were outraged. Let me ask you something, how do you think the US government would react if two Libyian planes where flying over Washington, D.C. calling people to arms and to start a revolution agasint the US government, by garnishing them with flowers? Im sick of hearing Cubanos complain about Castro, hell if they dont want Castro let's bring back the corrupt dictatorship of Batista where a handful of people owned all the land and while 95% of the population was starving, living in the streets, illiterate, poorly educated, had no job opportunity, etc. the other 5% lived in mansions, ate the finest food, bathed everyday, slept on a matress, etc. The US says it "knows" the will of the Cuban people and has placed many acts to change the government, yet even though the US says it know the will of the Cuban people, it has placed misery and starvation in Cuba.

I'm very dissappionted in Castro's behavior in regards to his daughter, but I think Alina tries to politicize this book and criticize Castro as a leader rather than as a bad father. My father left my mom when I was 12 and just recently I found out that he's a doctor working in South Africa on behalf of Cuba's medical help towards that country, now am I going to say that he is a bad doctor, no I'm not, Im going to say he was a bad father. It really dissapionted me that Alina complains through out the whole book about Cuba's society. Unless your anti-socialist, anti-castro I don't recommend this book because instead of being a story about a daughter and her father it is basically a book that bashes Cuba left and right.

I found Alina's book somewhat hard to follow at times. However, I found Cuba somewhat hard to understand. Having traveled there, Castro certainly does not need a book by his daughter to discredit himself. The country is the pits. It speaks for itself. Castro is an unintelligent clown. The embargo is nothing but an excuse by Cubans to explain the starvation and oppression I saw in Bayamo and Santiago de Cuba. A complete police state. I have travelled other communist countries that we have not embargoed and found the same conditions. Wake up cubans, you have nothing to lose but the ties that bind you. The ties just happens to be a man named Fidel Castro and his henchmen.

Alina Fernandez has quite a story to tell. Not only does she provide an insider's view of life in the prison nation of Cuba, she offers a first hand account of growing up illegitimate with a biological father who had little time or interest in his inconvenient offspring.

The Cuban existence she portrays is bleak and empty. Under Castro's domination, a zeitgeist of amorality has entrapped Cuba and its innocent citizens in a web where dreams don't come true. Divorce and abortion are rampant and illicit sex begins at a very young age. Alina shows how Castro's officially imposed atheism enslaved the populace and stands as a constant de facto assault on the family structure. Parental rights are nonexistent, because children are only allowed to see their mothers and fathers once a month. To illustrate the country's miasma, she tells of having to wait five years to acquire a used toilet.

While she thoroughly documents Fidel's many faults from his murderous rampages to his unsatable sex drive, this autobiography never stoops to the level of a "Daddy Dearest" style hatchet job. Alina is equally up front about her own deficiencies that include a string of failed marriages-although that has tragically become the norm in much of Cuban society. The end shows her transformation with not only her escape to freedom but the conversion to Christianity of her teenage daughter. The original version ended with an open letter to the despot asking him to legalize Christmas again-a rare concession that has actually been granted.

While she is now a resident of Spain, Alina spent considerable time in the United States this year unsuccessfully fighting to have a common sense approach applied toward the case of poor Elian Gonzalez whose mother valiantly lost her life getting him to freedom only to have her sacrifice obliterated by the gestapo tactics of Bill Clinton and Janet Reno. This book provides an extensive look into life of entropy the lawless raid returned him to. If more Americans could comprehend Alina's story, Elian would not have been evicted and Clinton and Reno would be subjected to appropriate criminal penalties.

Miller concentrates on the people he meets and keeps away from politics.

The result is an entertaining account of his extended visit to Cuba including the time he spent in Havana and travelling throughout the country.

I found the book puts a more humanizing face on the country that is always dominated by coverage of Castro and his policies.

For me, this book is a good companion to Buena Vista Social Club in providing a non-political view of Cuba and Cubans.

I'm surprised at the dislike some reviewers have expressed towards this book. True, its dated picture of 1992-era Cuba does not ring entirely true compared to the country one sees today: more and more marked by tourism everyday. But Miller's funny, flowing writing style and encounters with everyone from literati to farmers to hustlers are rendered in an intelligent and observant way. His 'digressive' style of writing actually serves the material quite well, and preserves a chatty familiarity that does justice to what this is: a travel diary. It's a lot more astute than most of them.

Miller's book is written before the turn to tourism, which has dramatically transformed Cuba and Cubans. Those who read this and then travel there will find a very different country. Nevertheless, the book is useful for understanding a too often misunderstood society, one that remains one of the world's most culturally vibrant, despite hardships, blockades and misguided economic policies.

Unfortunately, this Yale edition leaves out about half of what Newman himself published in 1873 as the definitive edition of THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY. Published here are only the nine "Dublin Discourses" from Part I on "University Teaching" and but four of the ten chapters of Part II, "University Subjects Discussed in Occasional Lectures and Essays." For the hundred-page displacement of Newman's essays, the editor substitutes five interpretive essays supposedly inquiring into the relevance of Newman's book for today's higher education debates. These interpretive essays have major inconsistencies and repetitions among themselves and are of mixed quality, with inaccuracies and serious misunderstandings of some of Newman's central ideas. As accurate forays of the Newmanian mind into the twentieth- and twenty-first century university, only the engaging and intellectually challenging essays by George Marsden and George Landow succeed. (COMPLETE paperback editions of Newman's IDEA are available from Loyola University Press, 1987, and University of Notre Dame Press, 1982).

A wonderful work, too bad that this edition by Regnery is chock full of glaring typographical errors. Detracts from Newman's otherwise brilliant prose.

Newman's work is not only an eloquent, erudite, and careful defense of the virtue of knowledge and the value of a liberal education; it is also a brilliantly reasoned and felt argument for the prevention of hubris on the part of any particular branch of knowledge.

Newman's sound warnings against the overreaching of scientific fields and the triumph of smug materialism and positivism are still urgent, of course. Newman is also careful to point out that the liberal arts and even theology may attempt to establish a single, inadequate framework for the discovery of truth.

Newman's complex epistemology does not fall prey to the heresy that truth is not one, but reminds us that in our present state, truth present various aspects and that the tyranny of any particular branch of knowledge is the victory of ignorance.

The author of this book certainly knows Cuba well and has been a strong advocate for constructive engagement with the Cuban regime for quite some time now which is commendable. Nonetheless her complete lack of objectivitity and intellectual honesty are evident from page one. In essence she is much too close to the subject matter and therefore compromised to offer anything credible on the topic. She is also excessively emotional in her obsession with all things Castro. The author once had the audacity to say that the only thing Castro wants before he dies is to be able to feed his people. What a farce! Anyone who wants to get "Inside the Cuban Revolution" should visit the island and not waste their money on this worthless propaganda.

I've been to Cuba and am vehemently anti-communist. I was looking for a book that would give me documented, factual information. I believe I found it. Somewhat difficult to follow at times, it nontheless provided me with insight I have not found elsewhere. While soft on the ruthlessness of Castro, however, it debunked several myths of the so-called "people's uprising" and put things in a bit more perspective.

My history professor at Princeton, where I'm a graduate student, raved about this book and called it one of the best books she's read in the past 20 years. I agree. I was blown away by Dr. Sweig's research and compelling narrative. Regardless of what you think of Castro - and I deeply oppose his totalitarian regime - you will learn things about the Cuban Revolution you never knew before. I can't understand some of the reviews below, and quite frankly I question them as coming from people with ideological axes to grind. I find that totally puzzling. The book is written with ZERO bias. It is a right-down-the-middle historical analysis that is fair to both sides in the Cuban debate... and believe me, I was looking for bias from the author, Dr. Sweig. Again, I am as staunchly anti-Castro as they come. I totally agree with the rave reviews of this book by people like Arthur Schlesinger and Ted Sorenson. It's a must read!

For someone who portrays himself as the expert on the reality of Latin America, Openheimer once again displays his ignorance of the facts.

My advice to Openheimer is to write about something which he knows better. The corruption tied to neo-liberalism and it's failure to rescue Latin America from economic despair.

With this book he pays lip service and tribute to a very narrow segment of the cuban american population in the city where he resides, comfortably writing from an ivory tower.

More telling than any other cold-war era work compiled over the last 15 years, Andres Openheimer dives into the case that almost brought Fidel Castro and his regime to its knees in late 1980's Havana. With accurate and never before revealed information, the writer investigates an array of characters from simple citizens to famed and personal friends of the dictator. A must read if you are looking to brush up on recent Cuban history and politics.

Chapter after chapter is devoted to Nikita Khrushchev's point of view, or Fidel Castro's, who are as cardboard as you might expect; thus any emotional "through-line" is lost. Blackford Oakes, the hero, shows up so infrequently -- I'd guess we see him in no more than one out of every six chapters. Which makes for a tedious read. Sorry.

As someone with little knowledge of the Kennedy years in the white house, given what we now know of the geo-political climate of the time, this book reads like a genuine, behind-the-scenes look into the Kennedy / Castro conflict. With ingenious characters and subplots, Mr Buckley provides the reader with an immensely entertaining, can't put the book down thriller. Blackford Oakes is a much more believable secret agent than that we are served up in any James Bond movie, more along the lines of a Jack Ryan, tenacious in persuing the aim of his mission. The flow of the story is exquisitely smooth and the surprise plot twists are most intriguing. Could these things have actually happened? Seems credible in hindsight...and a great read!

Amazon steered me to this book when I was looking for more on Cuban politics after reading "Against All Hope" by Armando Valladares (a maginificent, poetic book about the horrors of life in the Cuban gulag).

Geyer presents a sweeping biography of Castro, from childhood all the way up to September 11. She offers real insight on Castro's psychology and crisply recounts events leading up the revolution. It is primarily a political history.

To me the most fascinating aspect of Castro's story is how easily he comes to power after starting out with such pathetically meager resources. His "liberation" of Cuba begins with a tragi-comic marine landing by a handful of hungry and confused rebels. Incredibly, by virtue of his irresistible personality, brilliant, bold, and ruthless tactics, and a hopelessly incompetent Batista regime, Castro takes control of Cuba. The story is remarkably similar to that of Pizarro's conquest of the Incas.

Two problems with the book. First, I think Geyer's narrative becomes quite sketchy after Castro reaches power. There's a lot going on, and she needs more detail to tie together all the political, psychological, and social threads of her story. Second, the writing is uneven: her descriptions of characters and events are passionate and dramatic, but her analysis is sometimes vague and hard to follow.

All in all, Geyer paints a pretty good picture of the Castro phenomenon. If you have never delved into this subject, you might be astonished at what's been going on 90 miles from the United States. Clearly, Geyer knows her material, since she personally knows many, many of the key political figures in Cuba and the United States. I think she is a very reliable source of information on a subject where reliable reporting is hard to find.

This book is a very well written analysis of Castro's regime as well as his personal methods of operation. It does an excellent job of helping to understand what makes him tick. However, it is extremely slanted toward the anti-Castro Miami Cuban community, and virtually ignores the black Cubans. Highly recommended, but take the bias into account, because it is easy not to.

As one of the thousands of the Cuban non-political middle class who had to flee Cuba leaving everything behind including family, who not only experienced and suffered Castro's rise to power first hand, and whose family and himself personally knew quite a few of the persons which the book makes reference to; I, would not edit anything in this book. This is an accurate and well researched work as its large number of appendix sources testify. Geyer's only hope for her book has been to open the eyes of those who are still under Castro's spell for pre 60's revolutionary romanticism. Her book details Castro's rise to power accurately including his use of brutality and its resulting human suffering which are inherent to any totalitarian regime.