San Antonio College Library

"The first comprehensive study of U.S. policy toward Cuba in the post-Cold War era, Unfinished Business: America and Cuba After the Cold War, 1989-2001, draws on interviews with Bush and Clinton policymakers, congressional participants in the policy debate, and leaders of the antisanctions business community, and makes an important original contribution to our knowledge of the evolution of American policy during this period." "This study argues that...

The United States played a decisive role in Cuba's political and economic development during the first half of the twentieth century. The emergence in the 1950s of a broad-based opposition movement to the Batista dictatorship was viewed by American policy makers as a threat to American interests. The paramount concern of the Eisenhower administration was to deny political power to the Castro forces, a goal pursued by all means short of direct military...

Detailed interpretation of the rise of Fidel Castro and of Communism on America's doorstep based in part on the author's personal experiences of the regime.

The Cuban threat has been a major concern of U.S. policy makers and Presidents. The Reagan administration charged Havana with arming and training revolutionaries in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Are those allegations any more accurate than those which prompted the Bay of Pigs debacle? Or do they overestimate the Cuban threat and commit us to a policy of overreaction? This examination of Cuban foreign policy makes possible a realistic evaluation of the...

"The 1959 Cuban Revolution remains one of the signal events of modern political history. A tiny island, once a de facto colony of the United States, declared its independence, not just from the imperial behemoth ninety miles to the north, but also from global capitalism itself. Cuba's many achievements--in education, health care, medical technology, direct local democracy, actions of international solidarity with the oppressed--are globally unprecedented....

In 1957, Herbert L Matthews of the New York Times, then considered one of America's premiere foreign correspondents, tracked down Fidel Castro in Cuba's Sierra Maestra mountains, and returned with what was considered the scoop of the century. His heroic portrayal of Castro, who was then believed dead, had a powerful effect on American perceptions of Cuba, both in and out of the government, and profoundly influenced the fall of the Batista regime....