This intimate, revisionist portrait of Fidel Castro, showing how an unlikely young Cuban led his country in revolution and transfixed the world, is “sure to become the standard on Castro’s early life” (Publishers Weekly). Until now, biographers have treated Castro’s life like prosecutors, scouring his past for evidence to convict a person they don’t like or don’t understand. Young Castro challenges us to put aside the caricature of a bearded, cigar-munching, anti-American hothead to discover how Castro became the dictator who acted as a thorn in the side of US presidents for nearly half a century. In this “gripping and edifying narrative…Hansen brings imposing research and notable erudition” (Booklist) to Castro’s early life, showing Castro getting his toughness from a father who survived Spain’s class system and colonial wars to become one of the most successful independent plantation owners in Cuba. We see a boy running around that plantation more comfortable playing with the children of his father’s laborers than his own classmates at elite boarding schools in Santiago de Cuba and Havana. We discover a young man who writes flowery love letters from prison and contemplates the meaning of life, a gregarious soul attentive to the needs of strangers but often indifferent to the needs of his own family. These pages show a liberal democrat who admires FDR’s New Deal policies and is skeptical of communism, but is also hostile to American imperialism. They show an audacious militant who stages a reckless attack on a military barracks but is canny about building an army of resisters. In short, Young Castro reveals a complex man. The first American historian in a generation to gain access to the Castro archives in Havana, Jonathan Hansen was able to secure cooperation from Castro’s family and closest confidants. He gained access to hundreds of never-before-seen letters and interviewed people he was the first to ask for their impressions of the man. The result is a nuanced and penetrating portrait of a man at once brilliant, arrogant, bold, vulnerable, and all too human: a man who, having grown up on an island that felt like a colonial cage, was compelled to lead his country to independence.

FIDEL CASTRO August 13, 1926 – November 26, 2016. “A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past.” --Fidel Castro From revolutionary and symbol of strength to Cold War adversary, Fidel Castro was one of the world’s most controversial leaders, and perhaps its most enduring. As Cuba’s towering and charismatic president for nearly fifty years, Castro’s influential leadership captivated allies and enemies alike. By virtue of passionate oration and committed sense of purpose—good or bad—Castro kept the Cuban people devoted and the world enthralled. From his earliest years as a student rebel to his role in Cuba's social reform to The Cuban Missile Crisis, his life is covered in extensive detail within this book. The transfer of power to Raul Castro is explored as well as the changes to Cuban/American diplomatic relations, including Obama’s view of America’s relationship with Cuba. Castro’s death is covered as well as the world’s the reaction to it, including the views of American and Cuban people and the differing reactions of Obama and Trump. A comprehensive look into each stage of Castro’s life and leadership More than a dozen color photos spanning the Cuban leader’s life Comes complete with Castro’s most resonating speeches Fidel Castro: In His Own Words is not only a reflection of Castro’s life, triumphs, and misdeeds, but it is a look at the people and places affected by his politics before, during, and after the age of Cuban embargo. Regardless of readers’ political preference, there is no doubt that this captivating leader’s influence on the Cuban people, The United States, and the world will continue to echo through time.

Cuba's former counterintelligence chief reviews more than 600 CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro - a project code-named Executive Action. Although melodramatic and at times almost comical, the plans were both drawn up in deadly earnest and entirely unconstitutional, as subsequent US government enquiries concluded, including the 1975 Commission headed by Senator Frank Church.

Rhetoric during and after the Cold War years has painted starkly contrasting portraits of Cuba's Fidel Castro: an unblemished idealist on the one hand, a ruthless dictator on the other. This insightful book, the most intimate and dispassionate biography of the revolutionary leader to date, shows that neither assessment is true. Leycester Coltman, British ambassador to Cuba in the early 1990s, came as close to personal friendship with Castro as any foreigner was permitted. With frequent contact and regular conversations, Coltman was in a unique position to observe the dictator's personality in both public and private situations. Here he presents a close-up view of the man who for half a century has been loved, admired, feared, and hated, but seldom really understood. Coltman chronicles the events of the Cuban leader's extraordinary life from the political activism of his university days in Havana to periods of exile, imprisonment, and guerilla warfare alongside Che Guevara, to the uncertainties of his old age. Drawing on personal observation and archival sources in Cuba and abroad, Coltman explores the contradiction between the private character and the public reputation, and highlights the complexities of the consummate actor who continues to play a crucial role on the international stage.

By his mastery of the spoken word, Fidel Castro reveals the unfolding process of the Cuban revolution, its extraordinary challenges, crises, chaos and achievements. Part of a two-volume anthology, this first volume is based on Castro's speeches.

A revelatory memoir of the 17 years Juan Sanchez spent as one of Fidel Castro's personal soldiers, in his innermost circle

Named a 2021 Top Thriller by Alta Journal ​2022 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist in Action/Adventure Fiction 2021 Professional Achievement Award, Johns Hopkins University faculty Finalist for the 2021 CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year In this visionary sequel to Castro’s Curveball, the former Washington Senators Minor League catcher has returned to Havana with a small role in a movie being filmed on location. Billy Bryan soon realizes that this place and his past remain as star-crossed as when he played winter ball in the Cuban capital decades before. Against his better judgment, Billy becomes entangled in a scheme to spirit a top baseball prospect off the island. This pits him against his old friend Fidel Castro. Despite being in his final days, the dictator remains a dangerous adversary, as does the Cuban sports machine and the Mexican crime syndicates that now direct baseball talent toward the U.S. Major Leagues. In Escape from Castro’s Cuba, Billy must once again navigate the crosscurrents of the so-called City of Columns: a place where the sunsets from the Hotel Nacional along the Malecón breakwater are as beautiful as ever, but where the alleyways in Old Havana still fan out, crooked and broken, like an old catcher’s fingers.