Fighting over Fidel: The New York Intellectuals and the Cuban Revolution

(Hardback)

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New York in the 1960s was a hotbed for progressive causes of every stripe, including women's liberation, civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam War--and the Cuban Revolution. Fighting over Fidel brings this turbulent cultural moment to life by telling the story of the New York intellectuals who championed and opposed Castro's revolution. Setting

Reviews

"Rojas has written an oddly captivating account of the Cuban revolution as a moment when ... two worlds clashed, when a political revolt in one nation upended intellectual forces in another. Rather than focus on Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, John F. Kennedy or the other usual suspects of this Cold War era, Rojas tells the story of the left-wing academics, beat poets, Black Panthers and radical journalists in the United States ... who initially embraced Cuba's transformations only to splinter over Castro's repression of individual freedoms and the island's move toward the Soviet orbit."--Carlos Lozada, Washington Post "Rojas uses Fighting Over Fidel to examine the wild crew of radical writers and left-wing thinkers in the United States as they struggled to understand Castro... Fighting Over Fidel is an important book, a vital book, in tracing the paths by which we arrived at our situation."--Joseph Bottum, Washington Free Beacon "Considered together, the portraits of Fighting Over Fidel are rich and erudite, and the book arrives at an important moment."--Patrick Iber, Los Angeles Review of Books "Rojas's discussion of the American left-wing intellectual support for the Cuban Revolution is a stimulating invitation to revisit a seminal period in the development of the US left."--Samuel Farber, Jacobin

Author Bio

Rafael Rojas is professor at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics in Mexico City. He is one of Cuba's most distinguished cultural critics and a renowned scholar of Latin American history.