Fidel Castro: A Biography - Softcover

Foss, Clive

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0750941758 ISBN 13: 9780750941754

Publisher: The History Press, 2006

Synopsis

Fidel Castro is a dynamic and charismatic leader, who has led Cuba through success and failures since 1959. Son of a rich landowner, he became a radical revolutionary who attempted to overthrow the government in 1956 with a tiny band of followers. Using propaganda and subversion as much as sudden attacks from his mountain hideout, he gained victory in 1959. He liberated his country from one dictator and the overwhelming influence of the United States, only to turn it into another dictatorship firmly under the control and patronage of the Soviet Union. The failure of the American attack at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 added to his reputation, while the missile crisis of 1962 put Cuba right at the centre of the Cold War. Later, by sending his army to Africa and supporting guerrilla movements in Latin America, he made Cuba a significant player on the world stage. Despite many attempts to remove him and the economic collapse of the USSR, Castro survived and in 1999, celebrated 40 years of his regime.

About this title

About the Author:

Clive Foss teaches history at Georgetown University, Washington, DC.

From Booklist:

Foss, a history professor, provides a quick biographical sketch of one of the most fascinating and enduring political figures in continental American history. Foss describes Castro's personality--charming, intelligent, and persistent--and the troubling political circumstances that have placed him on the world stage for so long. Castro's rebellious nature showed itself at an early age in a nation struggling to define its politics and leaders. But his world image as a revolutionary leader was helped first by an American press that overstated his forces in fighting the dictator Batista and later by the American government that adamantly opposed him and continues to do so. Castro has withstood U.S. blockades, CIA assassination attempts, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the dissolution of its sponsor the Soviet Union to outlast his enemies. Castro's association with Che Guevara and other revolutionary figures and sponsorship of resistance movements in Central and South America and Africa have made him a leading figure throughout the Third World. Foss neither lionizes nor demonizes this remarkable political figure. Vanessa Bush
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About this edition

• Publisher: The History Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0750941758
• ISBN 13: 9780750941754
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 176