¡Cuba Libre!: Che, Fidel, and the Improbable Revolution that Changed World History

Journalist Perrottet (Off the Deep End: Travels in Forgotten Frontiers) offers a fairly balanced, accessible history of the Cuban Revolution and how it was received in the late 1950s both at home and in the U.S. Before Cold War politics made Fidel Castro a bearded villain, he was America’s favorite revolutionary, having overthrown Cuba’s thuggish, corrupt president, Fulgencio Batista. Drawing on interviews with revolutionaries, accounts from historians from both countries, archival papers, and journalistic accounts, Perrottet traces the revolution’s arc from Castro’s student years to his 1959 interview on the Ed Sullivan Show (where the host fulsomely compared him to George Washington). Perrottet portrays with an unsparing eye the “wildly incompetent” early battles and campaigns in the Sierra Maestra mountains in the rugged backwater of Oriente Province, which nearly doomed the rebels. He avoids hagiography of the movement or Fidel, Raul Castro, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, arguing that Castro was motivated by an appetite for power rather than by fealty to political ideology, and had many flaws as a “disorganized, capricious, and petulant” leader. The book, however, is far less insightful about Castro’s shift to megalomania after coming to power. But, despite some soft spots, this offers an entertaining and useful perspective on a remarkable political and military upset. Agent: Henry Dunow, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. (Jan.)