Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: This is Cuba: An Outlaw Culture Survives by Ben Corbett ISBN: 0-8133-3826-3 Publisher: Westview Press Pub. Date: 15 October, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.46 (13 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Por fin la verdad
Comment: Read this book, the best book written about Cuba.
Rating: 5
Summary: I highly recommend this book.
Comment: Mr. Corbett has written a gem of a book. Although not perfect, his book captures the unique combination of hope, happiness, tyranny, and desperation faced by Cubans today and during the Special Period. As a Cuba scholar who has visited the island many times and who has read a large number of other books about Cuba, I fully recommend this book and believe that it is a better read than 95% of the other books about contemporary Cuba. The couple of reader commentaries on this book that were unduly critical appear to have been written by people who are out of touch with the reality that, even as you are reading this review, hundreds or thousands of Cubans are bemoaning their lives under the Castro regime, with a considerable number assembling a raft or otherwise trying their best to scrounge up money to try to finance an escape from the island, at risk of imprisonment for committing this "crime against the Revolution." Kudos, Mr. Corbett, on writing a vibrant, relatively balanced account of life in Cuba! I didn't agree with a few of your own comments, but that of course does not mean you did not write a very fine book.
Rating: 4
Summary: Great narrative that lacks great research
Comment: Free lance writer Ben Corbett in his recent book This is Cuba provides a fascinating first-person account of life for the average citizen in economically strapped Cuba. His narration is fresh and crisp while illuminating the often blurry images of Cuba that we see in the news. Cubans have found a way to survive the poverty and depletion of the Special Period (the time of economic chaos following the collapse of Cuba's financial benefactor, the Soviet Union in 1991) with amazing dexterity. Corbett interviews everyone from the street hustler (jineteros) to old men who sit at a park and argue over sports teams, to find out their honest and uncensored feelings of Fidel Castro and their "outlaw" country.
This is Cuba does have some deep flaws. Corbett is a free lance writer and not a scholar, so some of his comments on the history of Cuba and its economic policy are clearly wrong or mislead. John Hopkins University professor of history Piero Gleijeses's "Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976" is a distinctively better source of information on Castro and his foreign policy as well as his economic successes and failures. Corbett also seems to let his distaste for Castro's dictatorship allow him to falsely identify some of the factors how and why Cuba is as poor as it is today. The US embargo is severely downplayed, which is a critical mistake. To underestimate the effects of an economic blockade by the most powerful nation in the world on an island nation is not looking at reality. Corbett also fails to fully write about some of the positives of what he most often refers to as the "Castro's regime". Cuba owes its deliverance from the pathetic dictatorship of Batista and gaining it's self-respect (which has been bolstered by Cuba's help in supporting African countries fight terrorists and diamond smuggling rebel movements) to the leadership of its flawed but dynamic leader Fidel Castro. Corbett's lack of balance does not stop this book from being a very useful guide to the real world of 21st Century Cuba.
 |
Title: Havana & the Best of Cuba by Penguin Books ISBN: 0141000295 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
 |
Title: Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana by Ann Louise Bardach ISBN: 0375504893 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
 |
Title: Cuba On the Verge: An Island in Transition by Terry McCoy, William Kennedy, Arthur Miller ISBN: 0821228021 Publisher: Bulfinch Pub. Date: 20 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
 |
Title: Cuba Diaries : An American Housewife in Havana by Isadora Tattlin ISBN: 0767914848 Publisher: Broadway Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
 |
Title: Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy by Carlos Eire ISBN: 0743219651 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 05 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
