Essential Background Reading on Cuba from UNC Press
In light of the sea change in U.S.-Cuban relations, I am delighted to recommend two books to anyone who wants to get up to speed: On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture, by Louis A. Pérez Jr., and Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana, by William LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh.
On Becoming Cuban is a prizewinning, sweeping cultural history that reveals just how really close Cubans and U.S. Americans are.
The just-published Back Channel to Cuba is oracular: opening with invasions, covert operations, assassination plots using poison pens and exploding seashells, and a grinding economic embargo, this book presents a surprising, untold history of bilateral efforts toward rapprochement and reconciliation. Having uncovered hundreds of formerly secret U.S. documents and conducted interviews with dozens of negotiators, intermediaries, and policy makers, including Fidel Castro and Jimmy Carter, LeoGrande and Kornbluh entertainingly chronicle how, despite the political clamor surrounding any hint of better relations with Havana, serious negotiations have been conducted by every presidential administration since Eisenhower’s through secret, back-channel diplomacy. What more can I say?
For the full list of our books in Cuban studies, please visit the UNC Press website.
You must be logged in to post a comment.