Customer Reviews

Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know

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Cuba,What Everyone Needs to Know is just that - what we all need to know about Cuba to be fully educated about the country, its history, its relationship with the US, and why it matters. Julia Sweig's writing is thoroughly accessible, making the subject compelling, alive, and relevant. She's given us an utterly balanced look at history and the issues. Her expertise is of the highest caliber. For anyone interested in Cuba, this book is a must.

What an unbelievable book this is. I bought it seen Dr. Sweig all over television over the past year. She comes across as one of the smartest, most charismatic talking heads on foreign policy I've seen in a generation. Her book, Cuba: What Everyone Needs To Know, is every bit as compelling. It manages to be accessible yet erudite, sweeping yet detailed, and conversational yet profound. Whether you are a Cuban history buff or want to give a friend with little knowledge of Cuba the primer of all primers, this is the book to get. I'm blown away.

If visiting Cuba to see more than vintage American cars is appealing, you can rely on expert Julia Sweig's new, most timely book, Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know. Sweig's long established knowledge of Cuba together with her fun, familiar, voice-filled writing style makes this the bible for rediscovery of Cuba as the US gradually opens up the embargo-burdened bogeyman 90 miles to the South.

I just finished this wonderful book (CUBA What Everyone Needs to Know) and I LOVED it. Ms. Sweig is a gifted writer: this book reads like fiction. Really, the book is a page turner. I learned a great deal, but it was painless -- not like an assigned reading at all. I would highly recommend CUBA What Everyone Needs to Know to students who want to learn about Cuba as well as to folks who are just looking for a good read. I read at least one American newspaper a day (usually the Washington Post) and I did not know most of the information in the book. For example, did you know that on 911 the Cuban government "privately offered to open its airfields for American planes to land there and offered medical teams to assist with the disaster and recovery."(see p. 181) I had no idea. Thumbs up for this great book.

In this new book, Julia Sweig draws on her impressive knowledge of Cuba to great effect. The book seamlessly traces Cuba from its early colonial history through the Cuban Revolution, its aftermath, and outlines the contemporary issues now that Fidel has left power. The book can be read in one sitting or used as a reference, and the Q&A format works well because all the right questions get asked. I especially enjoyed the historical section which gives a great synopsis of Cuba's early origins, as well as the current political analysis. The book matches the ambitions of its title and then some---it should be a first resort for the curious and the expert alike!

Easily one of the best studies of Cuba and its cultural scene to come out in the last few years. It gives a very well documented historical background that goes back to the nineteenth century tracing the path of Cuban history from its liberation from Spain with United States help, and the poet and activist Jose Marti to the present and the Castro brothers. Rather than defend one side or another of the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s, Sweig offers a well balanced analysis of all the factors in what amounts to the most objective study I have yet read. It carefully documents United States involvement and interests in Cuba without prejudice. Readers should come away from this book with a clearer understanding of the complexities of Cuban politics and its relations with the rest of the world, not just Russia and the U.S.

No one should visit this island nation without this book in hand. Julia Sweig has written a pensive and balanced overview of Cuba's history from the time of the Conquistadors to President Obama inauguration. Her question & answer format makes this an easy read while waiting or resting. This book will remind you of what has faded from memory: The Castro brother's overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's mob controlled government, the Bay of Pig's debacle, the Cuban missile crisis and much more. Remember Jimmy Carter's Mariel boatlift, or Elian Gonzales? Sweig covers this and scores more including a great section 'After Fidel, Under Raul'. Outside of one or two great travel guides (Moon & Rough Guide both 2010) there is not a better book to travel Cuba in hand. Highly Recommended.

The format of this book, divided as it is into questions, which it then proceeds to answer, makes this hard to read through since some info is repeated for different questions. While it does not softball human rights issues with Castro's regime neither does it "ask" really hard questions concerning Communism and instead keeps "asking" about Cuban arts and culture. Is this really what everyone needs to know about Cuba?

I have been traveling back and forth to Cuba since 1974 - that's more than 35 years now. I thought I knew a lot about Cuba - that is until I read Julia Sweig's book. So readable and understandable. For anyone who has never visited Cuba or for those who have made such a trip, reading this book will not only increase your knowledge of Cuba but an understanding of why and how things happened. Without hesitation, this is a must read.

First, the title is misleading. The book doesn't tell you anything that a tourist needs to know, e.g., how to make a call from a pay phone in Cuba. Instead it's yet another history of Cuba.

The section about Arnaldo Ochoa establishes the author's viewpoint. According to "After Fidel," by Brian Latell, Ochoa was Raul's best friend and a high-ranking Army general. He was competent, popular with his troops, and well-liked by everyone. Fidel was wary of anyone capable of taking his place. Ochoa's mistake was to make a funny comment about Fidel's underwear when they were swimming on a vacation. Soon Ochoa was arrested and framed for drug smuggling. Fidel ordered Raul to execute his best friend. Raul was torn between loyalty to his brother and loyalty to Ochoa, but ordered the execution, and then had a nervous breakdown. But that's not the version Ms. Sweig presents. She presents the official version, that Ochoa was high-ranking general who was caught smuggling drugs and was then executed.

The section on the Bay of Pigs invasion again presents the official Cuban version of events, as opposed to the official U.S. Army version written by Grayston Lynch (the CIA officer who landed with the troops at Giron) in his memoir "Decision for Disaster: Betrayal at the Bay of Pigs." The Sweig/Cuban version is that the invasion was repelled primarily by the Cuban people's overwhelming support for the revolution and for Fidel. Sweig then says the second reason was that the invasion wasn't kept secret, i.e., that the Cuban military knew every detail of the invasion well in advance. According to Lynch's book that wasn't true. The Miami Cuban community was talking about a counterrevolutionary invasion, but the CIA knew how to keep a secret. (My great-uncle was CIA station chief for Cuba at the time and wasn't told of the invasion.) Sweig then confuses the Bay of Pigs invasion with the Granma landing, and explains that the soldiers had to "make their way through a virtually impenetrable mangrove swamp onto beaches covered with sharp coral shards." No, it was Fidel's revolutionaries who landed in a mangrove swamp, 500 miles east and five years earlier. The Bay of Pigs invaders landed on the beaches at Giron and Playa Larga, which is the most beautiful beach I've ever seen. The coral was in reefs offshore, that prevented the landing craft from approaching the beaches. Sweig finally gets one fact right, that when Kennedy cancelled the air support the Cubans got the upper hand in the battle. But she doesn't explain why he cancelled the air support, and this again belies that she presents only the official Cuban point of view. Lynch explains clearly that Kennedy's first priority was to avoid a war with the Soviet Union, so he insisted that the the invasion could not appear to be American, that it had to appear to be independent Cuban exiles based in Guatemala with no support from the United States. When the Cubans shot down a bomber painted in Cuban Air Force colors (but otherwise poorly disguised, the Cubans quickly recognized that it was American) and the pilot turned out to be an Alabama Air National Guard soldier working for the CIA, they had their proof that the Americans were behind the invasion and Kennedy cancelled further air support. Sweig doesn't mention any of this. She also doesn't mention Lynch's very interesting view that Kennedy intentionally sabotaged the invasion: the Eisenhower administration had planned a full invasion of Cuba, that would have succeeded, but might have started a war with the Soviet Union; Kennedy came into office and learned of this invasion planned to start in just two months; Kennedy found that if he cancelled the invasion he'd lose the support of the powerful Miami Cuban-American community, but if he went ahead with the invasion he'd start a war with the Soviet Union; so his solution was to change the invasion so the Cubans could repel it "with a dog and a gun" (e.g., move the landing from Trinidad to Giron, reduce the number of invaders to 1500, minimize air and naval support, etc.) and make it appear that the United States wasn't involved.

In sum, Ms. Sweig's book is a history of Cuba, mostly from the official Cuban government point of view, with added mistakes and confused facts. If you want a better short, readable history of Cuba, I suggest the history in the back of Christopher Baker's "Moon Cuba" guidebook. And if you're looking for what you'll need to know to visit Cuba, including how to use pay phones, I'll again recommend Christopher Baker's book.