Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant [Hardcover]

Humberto Fontova (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 25, 2005

Osama bin Laden got credit for the terrorist outrage of September 11, 2001, but as author and journalist Humberto Fontova reveals in his landmark new book Fidel, Fidel Castro - Hollywood's favorite tyrant - had planned a similar terrorist attack forty years earlier, with a plot to explode 500 kilos of TNT at Grand Central Station, the Statue of Liberty, and four Manhattan subway stations. Fidel gives a litany of such shocking facts about Fidel Castro - the facts you won't hear from the fawning liberal media that covers up for Castro and that praises Castro's Cuba for its fine cigars, beautiful beaches, and free health care, while overlooking its tyranny, support for terrorism, and impoverishment of its people.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

"Cuba’s own Elvis"—that’s what Dan Rather calls him. Funny name for a man who has threatened the United States with nuclear war, who has made common cause with Islamic terrorists against the United States, and whose people risk death to escape him. But there’s a lot that Hollywood liberals and other Fidel Castro admirers would rather you didn’t know about the dictator of Cuba—like how he imprisoned more people as a percentage of population than Hitler or Stalin; how Fidel’s firing squads killed thousands of Cubans; how Fidel’s subjects would rather inject themselves with AIDS than live under his tyranny. Drawing on a wealth of research—including interviews with former Castro regime officials, anti-Castro freedom fighters, and Castro’s political prisoners—acclaimed author Humberto Fontova reveals the ugly face of the Castro regime. Along the way, he punctures some of the egregious myths about Cuba: · The Motorcycle Bore: The real Che Guevara—not the rebel rock star of T-shirt fame, but a battlefield incompetent, a puritan-Stalinist bore, and the man who sent thousands of innocent Cubans to the firing squads · Communist Economics 101: How Castro took Cuba from being a First World economy that had to turn away European emigrants to a country that even impoverished Haitians won’t emigrate to, with among the highest suicide and abortion rates in the world · The Saddam Hussein Next Door: How Castro has not only had nuclear weapons (and wanted to launch them) but has plotted massive terrorist outrages against the United States · Fidel the anti-black racist and unrepentant Communist—and his long list of useful idiots: from Jesse Jackson to Oliver Stone, George McGovern to Ted Turner, Bill Clinton to Steven Spielberg, to Katie Couric and many others · The Left’s favorite racism: against conservative Cuban-Americans

Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant is a stunning exposé of the real Fidel Castro and of the hypocrisy, ignorance, and inexcusable appeasement that makes his liberal admirers notorious.

About the Author

Cuban-born Humberto Fontova came to the United States when he was six years old and grew up in New Orleans. He is a graduate of the University of New Orleans and has an master’s degree in Latin American studies from Tulane University. His critically acclaimed true-life adventure books are The Helldiver’s Rodeo (a Publisher’s Weekly "Book of the Week") and The Hellpig Hunt. Fontova writes and comments frequently on Latin American affairs for both English- and Spanish-language media. He lives in New Orleans with his family.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 229 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing (February 25, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0895260433
• ISBN-13: 978-0895260437
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #508,769 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

130 of 153 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book will help you understand Castro's brutality, March 15, 2005

By 

Craig Matteson (Saline, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant (Hardcover)

The story of Fidel Castro and the policy of the US towards his rule of Cuba is a very strange one. There are a huge number of people on the left who should be opposing such a brutal dictator, except that he is supposedly a socialist / communist and providing for "all the people" rather than a few millionaire exploiters. Of course, that is not true, but the fawning goes on nonetheless.

Instead, the people who have fled Castro's brutal tyranny are denounced. They are inconvenient to a liberal agenda that wants to believe that Castro's brand of socialism works. So, these refugees are ignored as much as possible, mischaracterized as rich exploiters who only want to get back properties they had long ago stolen "from the people". What nonsense! For every well to do refugee, there are thousands with nothing who fled for a chance at freedom. It is not an accident that so many Cuban refugees have done well in this country. They wanted to be free and have taken full advantage of what freedom offers to those who work diligently.

This useful book by Humberto Fontova, a child of the Cuban exile, is a cry of the heart. It gives passionate voice to those heroes who were tortured and murdered by Fidel and Che. He rails against the "useful idiots" who end up sustaining Castro's brutality. He cites so many of our politicians who find this whole Cuban episode so inconvenient and who want it to simply go away. These politicians and media elites denounce the exile community and try to discredit their voice in order to undermine its powerful political effect.

Mr. Fontova makes clear the agony this community has faced in fleeing Cuba, their pride in their success in America, and their frustration with those who either wittingly or unwittingly help prop up Castro's vicious regime. Does their hurt and passion take them too far? Maybe. The author believes in the Castro conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Who knows? I know that nearly every other voice in America is given its say to promote "diversity" no matter how deleterious their prescriptions for our country. We should hear these people as well and then make our judgment. I think this book is a good corrective for the way this community's voice has been ignored and mischaracterized in the mass media.

It is better, I think, to hear the voices directly rather than characterized in an unsympathetic press. So, give this book a read and take part in our national debate over our Cuba policy from a more fully informed stance.

52 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Who protects the tyrant next door?, March 20, 2005

By 

T. F. Novak (Cumming, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant (Hardcover)

Cuban born, and cajun-raised, author Humberto Fontova has driven a stake into the black heart of American Leftism with this expose of Hollywood and the U.S. State Department's poster-boy of failed marxism - Fidel Castro. This book has been written for all of us Joe Sixpacks in the United States, who don't understand how it can be that this purely evil, murderous dictator can openly operate a gangster-state ninety miles from NAS Key West with impunity. In this book, Humberto Fontova is telling us exactly why Fidel is still in power... without the continuous unwavering support of two generations of elites in American popular culture, American academia and American government, Mr. Castro would surely be hanging from a lamp post in Havana tomorrow, as he deserves.

If you've ever wondered why those stubborn, revanchist, conservative cuban-americans in Miami are so outraged at the U.S. governments bizarre "Cuba-policy" and it's failed "embargo" and are always so out of step with all the other "hispanics" in the U.S.; why they fought so fiercely to try to patriate Elian Gonzalez, why they work so hard, achieve so much as U.S. citizens and have successfully maintained their history, culture and values in the face of a full court press of political-correctness you'll find the answers in Fidel, Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant by Humberto Fontova. HINT: It's because Cuban-americans understand Fidel Castro.

Get this astonishingly well-written and eye-opening book and you too will understand who it is that keeps this tyrant Fidel in power - Hollywood Leftists.

125 of 153 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Evil Fidel Castro, March 17, 2005

By 

R. Wallace "Bob Wallace" (St. Louis, Mo USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant (Hardcover)

Some choice bits from this book:
Castro tried to get Nikita Khrushchev to nuke several southern cities in the US in the early 1960's, including New Orleans and probably Baton Rouge. He incarcerates more people as a percentage of population than [...] or Stalin. He murdered 17,000 Cubans and (several dozen U.S. citizens) with firing squads and dumped their bullet-riddled bodies in mass graves. He has impoverished and brutalized Cuba to the point where 20 percent of its population risked their lives to flee. And prior to his glorious reign, Cuba took in more immigrants per capita than any country in the Western Hemisphere. More Americans lived in Cuba than Cubans in the U.S., and Cuba even had to turn away European immigrants. Castro sent his agents to torture to death American POWs in North Vietnam's Cu Loc POW camp outside Hanoi in 1967. The list goes on and on, as it always does with tyrants. All of whom, I'll add, always call themselves benefactors. And this is a man cheered on by leftists everywhere, especially the nitwits in Hollywood?