Showing titles in Caribbean & West Indies

A “balanced, engrossing account” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) of the Bay of Pigs crisis drawing on long-hidden CIA documents and delivering the vivid truth of five pivotal days in April 1961. At the heart of the Bay of Pigs crisis stood President John F. Kennedy, and journalist Jim...

After the United States embassy in Havana was closed in 1961, relations between the countries broke off. A thaw came in 1977 with the opening of a de facto embassy in Havana, the United States Interests Section—where Vicki Huddleston would serve under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. In her memoir of a diplomat at work, she tells gripping stories of face-to-face encounters with Fidel Castro and the initiatives she undertook, like the transistor radios she furnished to ordinary Cubans.

The Spanish-American War really only lasted about ten weeks (the buildup and decision to go to war took longer than the war itself), but a peace treaty was not signed until December of 1898. This was an event that was the tipping point for the end of the Spanish Empire and the rise of the US as a formidable player on the world stage. Not all Americans were happy with the change, with famous Americans like Mark Twain speaking out about the US occupation of the lands that it was meant to save.

Historians consider the Haitian Revolution the most successful slave revolt in all of history. Though many fought in the rebellion, one man ensured their victory: Toussaint Louverture. With his political savvy and leadership skills, this former slave helped the inhabitants of what was then called Saint Domingue to challenge their French oppressors.

Todos los detalles de la famosa isla en un audiolibro que no puede perderse. Este bello país del Caribe, gobernado por el régimen castrista desde hace más de medio siglo con Fidel Castro a la cabeza, es conocido por ser el epicentro de una magnífica cultura musical, un pueblo que pese a sus problemas anhela por su libertad, y una alegría invencible.

Este libro relata la vida de una familia y unos acontecimientos que cambiaron para siempre la historia de América Latina. Como nadie más podía hacerlo, Juanita nos adentra en el mundo familiar de los Castro, desde su infancia y juventud hasta las nuevas generaciones, pasando por la gesta contra Batista, la Revolución y el posterior desencanto de muchos.

In Colonizing Paradise, historian Jefferson Dillman charts the broad spectrum of sentiments that British citizens and travelers held regarding their colonial possessions in the West Indies. Because British sentiments in the Caribbean located danger and evil not just in indigenous populations but in Spanish Catholics as well, Dillman’s work begins with the arrival of Spanish explorers and conquistadors. Colonizing Paradise spans the arrival of English ships and continues through the early nineteenth century and the colonial era.

In its formative years, America, birthplace of a revolution, wrestled with a volatile dilemma. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and many other founding fathers clashed. What was to be the new republic's strategy toward a revolution roiling just off its shores? From 1790 to 1810, the disagreement reverberated far beyond Caribbean waters and American coastal ports. War between France and Britain, the great powers of the time, raged on the seas and in Europe.

Joseph Laroche was an anomaly among the passengers of the Titanic. He was exceptionally well-educated in a time when few Black men had access to an education - and when even fewer were able to travel on a luxurious ship in first or second class. When his family arrived in the United States without him after the Titanic's tragic crash, they were received well along with the other survivors and even sponsored by a wealthy New York heiress. Who was Joseph Laroche? Where was he going, and what was his story? This biography recounts the life of Joseph Laroche.

A crucial, clear-eyed accounting of Puerto Rico's 122 years as a colony of the US. Since its acquisition by the US in 1898, Puerto Rico has served as a testing ground for the most aggressive and exploitative US economic, political, and social policies. The devastation that ensued finally grew...

Drawing on a vast array of archival sources from around the hemisphere and world, The Fate of the Americas demonstrates that even at the brink of destruction, Latin Americans played active roles in global politics and inter-American relations.

Here is the story of political prisoners finally freed in December 2014, after being held captive by the United States since the late 1990s. Through the 1980s and 1990s, violent anti-Castro groups based in Florida carried out hundreds of military attacks on Cuba, bombing hotels and shooting up...

The twelve entries in The Golden Age of Piracy discuss why pirates thrived in the seas of the New World, how pirates operated their plundering ventures, how governments battled piracy, and when and why piracy declined. Separating Hollywood myth from historical fact, these essays bring the real pirates of the Caribbean to life with a level of rigor and insight rarely applied to the subject.

Using breakthrough reporting and interviews with long-silent sources, Gus Russo and Stephen Molton have crafted a dramatic retelling of the time before, during, and after the killing of John F. Kennedy. 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.

"[Narrator Frankie] Corzo's expressive style enhances [author Elena] Sheppard's moving story of loss and identity. " — AudioFile In the tradition of The Yellow House and Half Broke Horses, a memoir of the Cuban diaspora that follows one family’s exile from the island, through a lyrical...

A piercingly powerful memoir, a grandson’s account of the coup that ended his grandfather's presidency of Haiti, the secrecy that shrouded that wound within his family, and his urgent efforts to know his mother despite the past. “A brilliant, absorbing book...I couldn’t stop reading.”...

Uncover the untold story of the Taíno, the first people of the Caribbean, in this riveting exploration of history, culture, and resilience. From their ancient migrations through South America to their thriving societies across the islands, this book brings to life the rich legacy of the Taíno people. Delve into the vibrant daily lives of the Taíno, their spiritual beliefs rooted in the natural world, and their mastery of sustainable living.

Robert Wedderburn (1762-1834/5) was one of the most charismatic, irascible, and radical intellectuals of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Atlantic world. Born to an enslaved woman and a slavemaster in Jamaica, and moving in the radical working-class circles of London, Wedderburn made his name as a fiery political writer and orator—before dying, forgotten, in poverty. From award-winning scholar Ryan Hanley, this is the first full-length biography of a man increasingly recognized as central to Black radical political thought in the Revolutionary Atlantic.

If not for an unlikely alliance among a bespectacled cowboy, a former Confederate general, and a millionaire newspaper publisher, the Spanish-American War might never have been. How these three outsize characters—Theodore Roosevelt, Joseph “Fighting Joe” Wheeler, and William Randolph Hearst—helped ignite the war that established the United States’ offshore empire is the rousing tale that Matthew Bernstein tells in Team of Giants.

“[A] magisterial account . . . Gibson constructs a sweeping vision of resistance to slavery as a defining element of Western history that made “abstract concepts of freedom concrete.” Expansive and elegant, this is a marvel.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Among the...