"Frequent insights, stimulating historical comparisons, and command of the data relating to Cuba's economic and social performance." — Foreign AffairsUncritically lauded by the left and impulsively denounced by the right, the Cuban Revolution is almost universally viewed one dimensionally. In this book, Samuel Farber, one of its most informed left-wing critics, provides a much-needed critical assessment of the Revolution's impact and legacy."The Cuba...

From 1932 until his death in 1990, Hal Draper was a prolific Marxist writer and socialist organizer who successfully combined rigorous research and passionate outrage to assess his political era. In this still-indispensable collection of essays written in the 1950s and 60s, Draper grapples with the role of the United States in the world, situating post-war American imperialism in a global picture of capitalist competition and expansion. The essays in this volume include Draper’s discussion...

Analyzing the crucial period of the Cuban Revolution from 1959 to 1961, Samuel Farber challenges dominant scholarly and popular views of the revolution’s sources, shape, and historical trajectory. Unlike many observers, who treat Cuba’s revolutionary leaders as having merely reacted to U.S. policies or domestic socioeconomic conditions, Farber shows that revolutionary leaders, while acting under serious constraints, were nevertheless autonomous agents pursuing their own independent ideolog...

This reexamination of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's thoughts on socialism, democracy, and revolution is a must-read for today's activists—or anyone longing to fight for a better world.Fifty years after his death, Guevara remains a symbol to legions of young rebels and revolutionaries. This unique book provides a way to critically engage with Guevara's economic views, his ideas about revolutionary agency, and his conduct as guerrilla commander and government administrator in Cuba....

From one of our greatest historians, a magnificent reckoning with the modern world's most fateful idea.With astonishing authority and clarity, Richard Pipes has fused a lifetime's scholarship into a single focused history of Communism, from its hopeful birth as a theory to its miserable death as a practice.At its heart, the book is a history of the Soviet Union, the most comprehensive reorganization of human society ever attempted by a nation-state. Drawing on much new info...

The #1 NYT BESTSELLERA personal and urgent examination of Fascism in the twentieth century and how its legacy shapes today’s world, written by one of America’s most admired public servants, the first woman to serve as U.S. secretary of state.“There is priceless wisdom on every page.” Kirkus Starred reviewA Fascist, observes Madeleine Albright, ‘is someone who claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is utterly unconcerned with the rights of othe...

An accessible biography of one of the most influential figures of recent times based on new, original research.Che Guevara is something of a symbol in the West. But for the rest of the world he is different: a charismatic revolutionary who redrew the political map of Latin America and gave hope to those resisting colonialism everywhere. In The Story of Che Guevara Lucía Álvarez de Toledo follows Che from his birth in Rosario and his early years in his pare...

A brilliant, sweeping history of diplomacy that includes personal stories from the noted former Secretary of State, including his stunning reopening of relations with China.The seminal work on foreign policy and the art of diplomacy.Moving from a sweeping overview of history to blow-by-blow accounts of his negotiations with world leaders, Henry Kissinger describes how the art of diplomacy has created the world in which we live, and how America’s approach to...

A brilliantly arresting historical work, John Lewis Gaddis's The Cold War takes us as never before to the time when the world stood on the brink of destruction.In 1945 war came to an end. But a whole new terror was only just beginning...Here is the truth behind every spy thriller you've read: why America and the Soviet Union became locked in a deadly stalemate; how close we came to nuclear catastrophe; what was really going on in t...

A “big, serious, and thoroughly intelligent” (New York Review of Books) history of the Cold WarWe think of the Cold War as a clash of two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. But in The Cold War, award-winning historian Odd Arne Westad argues that the war must be understood as a global confrontation, with roots in the Industrial Revolution and ongoing repercussions around the world. The Cold War may have begun on the perimeters of ...

A timely update to the phenomenal national bestseller.Soon after its quiet release during the height of the Red Scare in 1958, The Naked Communist: Exposing Communism and Restoring Freedom exploded in popularity, selling almost two million copies to date and finding its way into the libraries of the CIA, the FBI, the White House, and homes all across the United States. From the tragic falls of China, Korea, Russia, and the UN, to the fascinating histories of Alger H...

'Odd Arne Westad's daring ambition, supra-nationalist intellect, polyglot sources, masterly scholarship and trenchant analysis make The Cold War a book ofresounding importance for appraising our global future as well as understanding our past' Richard Davenport-Hines, TLS, Books of the YearAs Germany and then Japan surrendered in 1945 there was a tremendous hope that a new and much better world could be created from the moral and physical ruins of...