The account of Fidel Castro's rise to power is not complete without mention of the failed atacks of July 26, 1953, on the Cuban army garrisons at Moncada and Bayamo. This text views this initial overthrow attempt as a propaganda victory that marked the start of Castro's ascent to national power.

The book makes accessible a selection of speeches and television appearances by Fidel Castro during the first two years of the Cuban Revolution. Readers can trace the evolution of this legendary leader’s radical political thought and analyze his extraordinary capacity for overcoming adverse political and ideological circumstances in a constant movement towards a socialist ideal. The work is organized chronologically with introductory presentations prepared by Cuban experts José Bell, Tania Caram and Delia Luisa López and includes a glossary and bibliography. The methodology of this work is original and includes material from 1959 not previously published elsewhere.

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.

Taking part in the Cuban Revolution's first armed action in 1953, enduring the torture and killings of her brother and fiancé, assuming a leadership role in the underground movement, and smuggling weapons into Cuba, Haydée Santamaría was the only woman to participate in every phase of the Revolution. Virtually unknown outside of Cuba, Santamaría was a trusted member of Fidel Castro's inner circle and friend of Che Guevara. Following the Revolution's victory Santamaría founded and ran the cultural and arts institution Casa de las Americas, which attracted cutting-edge artists, exposed Cubans to some of the world's greatest creative minds, and protected queer, black, and feminist artists from state repression. Santamaría's suicide in 1980 caused confusion and discomfort throughout Cuba; despite her commitment to the Revolution, communist orthodoxy's disapproval of suicide prevented the Cuban leadership from mourning and celebrating her in the Plaza of the Revolution. In this impressionistic portrait of her friend Haydée Santamaría, Margaret Randall shows how one woman can help change the course of history.

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.