The Cubans: Ordinary Lives in Extraordinary Times [VINTAGE 2020] [FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING]

As new condition red boards, gold spine and gold spine lettering contained in an as new condition non price-clipped color photographic dust jacket. Includes List of Other Books by Anthony DePalma; Author Dedication; Preliminary Page Quote by Jose Marti; Prologue; Author's Note and Index. Illustrated with black-and-white maps. "For all that's been written about revolutionary Cuba, I know of no book that more vividly describes the interior of the contemporary Cuban experience. The ordinary people who share their struggles with Anthony DePalma have seen the bright promise of revolution give way to the dingy hardship of real life. DePalma strips the Cuba story of its shabby ideological pretensions, but beneath the surface finds Cubans who still care for each other and whose resilience defines a patriotism all its own." - Tom Gjelten, author. ".a profound and eloquent book that is destined to become a classic.An essential testimony as Cuba moves into an uncertain future." - Ruth Behar, author. "The Cubans is indispensable for anyone trying to understand the warmth, spirit, and 'national insanity' of the Cuban people and all they have been through over the last sixty years. It reads like a historical novel, with compelling characters, hurricanes, and the murder of children on the open seas. But this balanced, non-ideological, and meticulously reported story is all true." - Jonathan Alter, author. "If you want to know what the real Cuba is like for its natives - as opposed to the synthetic Cuba experienced by most tourists - this book will take you there, to that unique labyrinth of ruins where truth is as elusive as comfort or the bare necessities of life. Unflinchingly objective, yet suffused with poetic empathy for the complex characters whose lives it chronicles, Anthony DePalma's narrative reads like the best of novels. Uplifting and devastating at the same time." - Carlos Eire, author of Waiting for Snow in Havana. "Cubans today, most of whom have lived their entire lives under the Castro regime, are hesitantly embracing the future. Anthony DePalma, a veteran reporter with years of experience in Cuba, focuses on a town across the harbor from Old Havana to dramatize the optimism as well as the enormous challenges that Cubans face. The result is a moving snapshot of Cuba with all its contradictions as the new regime opens the gate to the capitalism that Fidel railed against for so long. In Guanabacoa, longtime residents prove enterprising in the extreme. Scrounging materials in the black market, Caridad Luisa Limonta Ewen has started her own small manufacturing business, a surprising turn for a former ranking member of the Communist Party. Her good friend Lili Durand Hernandez, a loyal communist, heads the town's watchdog revolutionary committee. Painter Arturo Montoto, who had long lived and worked in Mexico, moved back to Cuba when he saw improving conditions, but complains about recognition like any artist. In stark contrast, Jorge Garcia lives in Miami and continues to seek justice for the sinking of a tugboat full of refugees, a tragedy that claimed the lives of his son, grandson, and twelve other family members, a massacre in which the Cuban governement denies any role. In The Cubans, many patriots face one new question: Is their loyalty to the revolution or to their country? Cuba has become an improvised country, an old machine kept running with equal measures of ingenuity and desperation. A new kind of revolutionary spirit thrives beneath the conformity of a half century of totalitarian rule. And over all of this looms the United States, with its unpredictable policies, which warmed toward its neighbor under one administration, but has now taken on a chill reminiscent of the Cold War." - from the inner front and rear jacket flaps.