Cuba: The Morning After: Confronting Castro's Legacy [Paperback]

Mark Falcoff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 29, 2008

A major study of U.S.-Cuba relations warns that America is ill-prepared for the serious dilemmas and even threats posed by a post-Castro Cuba.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A painstaking historical analysis . . . a detailed investigation of Cuba's current realities . . . what sober, scholarly assessments are for." -- Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wall Street Journal

"A sobering account of precisely what Fidel Castro's legacy is and what Cuba has to do to overcome it." -- Washington Times, September 8, 2003

"Falcoff debunks many of the myths about Communist Cuba." -- Jay Nordlinger, National Review --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Mark Falcoff is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, where he writes the monthly Latin America Outlook newsletter. He has taught at the Universities of Illinois, Oregon, and California at Los Angeles, as well as the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. He has served as a professional staff member on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, a senior consultant to the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America, and a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on U.S.-Cuban Relations. Mr. Falcoff is editor of The Cuban Revolution and the United States, 1958-1960: A History in Documents (2001) and author of numerous books, including A Culture of Its Own: Taking Latin America Seriously (1998) and Panama's Canal: What Happens When the United States Gives a Small Country What It Wants (1998). He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 285 pages
• Publisher: Aei Press (February 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0844741760
• ISBN-13: 978-0844741765
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,760,623 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it., June 6, 2004

By 

Jim Stegall (Monroe, NC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cuba: The Morning After--Confronting Castro's Legacy (Hardcover)

Yes, Cuba is a charming and seductive place to visit. But as any one of the thousands of desperate migrants from that troubled land can tell you, it is a brutally hard place to live. Those women the tourist meets stolling along the seawall aren't out there for the view or the exercise. They are locked in a heart-wrenching struggle to eck out another day's subsistence using the only thing the state hasn't stolen from them (yet).

So it is a dirty job, but someone has to look past the charm and facade of today's Cuba and examine the cruel reality of Castro's legacy objectively. Numbers don't lie--they are what they are. That Cuba's numbers are horrible is not the fault of the author; those numbers (and the human suffering they entail) are the fault of Castro and the legions of boot-licks who have kept him in power, lo these many years. Left-wing American journalists, academics, democrat politicians, and celebrity activists figure prominently in that group, to their shame.

Mark Falcoff did this dirty job about as well as anyone could have expected. It's always a challenge to study a closed society such as Cuba's, where important facts are hidden away, crucial incidents are covered up or denied, and the official story is always a deliberate lie. I've studied Cuba closely for years, and I have always hoped that the long-sufering Cuban people would one day have a brighter future, free of Castro's suffocating bite. I was as disheartened as the previous reviewers were to be confronted with the ugly facts, but there they are. Complaining about them won't help.

Those who really care about Cuba should thank Mr. Falcoff for the 'heads up' this book provides. I hope our policy makers are aware of the information and analysis this book provides, and have some kind of plan to deal with the societal implosion the book predicts.

14 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An accurate account of reality without concern for fluff., November 28, 2004

By 

J. Font "Big Reader" (Nutley, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cuba: The Morning After--Confronting Castro's Legacy (Hardcover)

How refreshing to read a book that deals with reality, rather than the romantic rantings of liberals enamoured with Fidel Castro, cheap rum and desparate prostitutes. This book is a seriuous analysis of the problems Cuba will face in the future, and the legacy of hardship its people will have to endure thanks to the failed socialist experiment.

Anyone interested in a serious look at the costs of the "Socialist Paradise" where "everyone is equal" and there are "no poor people," should read this book. The disaster of this social experiement will impact us here in the USA whether we like it or not.

5 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It misses the Cuban spirit, February 23, 2004

By 

David Dennis (West Palm Beach, FL United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cuba: The Morning After--Confronting Castro's Legacy (Hardcover)

Most books on Cuba talk about the charm of her people, the delights of her women (for male authors, anyway) and the chaos of her economy. I visited Cuba in December of 2002 and can cheerfully report that Cuba is a highly seductive place, a place of great charm and beauty, and Cuban women are the sweetest in the world.

In this book, we see a very different Cuba, Economic Cuba. And Economic Cuba is a disaster. Harvests are failing. Equipment is failing. Sugar cane is rotting in the fields. Tourist hotels are booming but enrich only a tiny percentage of the population.

Economic Cuba, then, doesn't have a chance. The author paints a grim portrait of a country time forgot, one where there was little hope of any kind of economic recovery.

I have no doubt that this book is factual, as far as it goes. But it reads like someone who has never taken a stroll on the Malecon, the seawall. Beautiful but decaying examples of ancient architecture line the vast, American-built promenade. On the other side, the ocean, in its magnificence, and beyond the twin towers of the Hotel Nacional and the slick sterility of the Melia Cohiba hotel. The occasional Cuban girl offers the male tourist his favourite kind of company, as he strolls past enjoying the sunset.

In other words, this book underestimates the pull and the charm of Cuba, for tourists and future residents alike. If Cuba is opened up to investment from Americans, if investment laws can be made fair and the ugliness of Communism swept away into the dustbin of history, I have no doubt life on the island will become dynamic and fun once more.

But those are a lot of "if"s. If this book had done a good job analyzing them, I would cheerfully recommend it. But its analysis, in 25 brief pages, is superficial and reads like it came from someone who has never visited the island or enjoyed its charms.