Showing titles in Caribbean & West Indies

Since 1959, conflict and aggression have dominated the story of U.S.-Cuban relations. From John F. Kennedy's offering of an olive branch to Fidel Castro after the missile crisis, to Henry Kissinger's top-secret quest for normalization, to Barack Obama's promise of a "new approach", William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh reveal a 50-year record of dialogue and negotiations, both open and furtive, indicating a path toward better relations in the future.

The practice of piracy has been with us since human beings first sailed into open waters. Pirates, in fact, are still a phenomenon to this very day. From pirates of the Caribbean to the modern-day pirates of Somalia - there have always been those who would engage in acts of both banditry and bravado on the high seas. This book follows the exploits and dastardly deeds of these crooked sailors. Here you will learn about pirates like Captain Morgan, Blackbeard, a Pirate Queen, and many more infamous figures.

This audiobook exposes the misconceptions, half-truths, and outright lies that have shaped the still dominant but largely mythical version of what happened in the White House during those harrowing two weeks of secret Cuban missile crisis deliberations. A half-century after the event it is surely time to demonstrate, once and for all, that RFK's Thirteen Days and the personal memoirs of other ExComm members cannot be taken seriously.

This is Cuba is a true story that begins in the summer of 2009 when a young American photo-journalist is offered the chance of a lifetime - a two-year assignment in Havana. For David Ariosto, the island is an intriguing new world, unmoored from the one he left behind. From neighboring military coups, suspected honey traps, salty spooks, and desperate migrants to dissidents, doctors, and Havana’s empty shelves, Ariosto uncovers the island’s subtle absurdities, its Cold War mystique, and the hopes of a people in the throes of transition.

Using breakthrough reporting and interviews with long-silent sources, Gus Russo and Stephen Molton have crafted a dramatic retelling of the time before, during, and after the killing of John F. Kennedy. The book centers on the two opposed sets of brothers - the Kennedys and the Castros - who collectively authored one of modern history's most dangerous, and tragically ironic, chapters.

This audiobook tells the story of how Spain managed to conquer the Americas in the span of half a century, from the late 1400s to the mid-1500s. Although exploitation and warfare continued between the colonizers and the colonized after this period, the largest campaigns against the indigenous peoples were undertaken in this short time span, which is the focus of this audiobook.

After the United States embassy in Havana was closed in 1961, relations between the countries broke off. A thaw came in 1977 with the opening of a de facto embassy in Havana, the United States Interests Section—where Vicki Huddleston would serve under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. In her memoir of a diplomat at work, she tells gripping stories of face-to-face encounters with Fidel Castro and the initiatives she undertook, like the transistor radios she furnished to ordinary Cubans.

Fabián Escalante, the founder of the Cuban Intelligence Services and head of the Cuban State Security Department, provides a clear-eyed, first-person account of his experiences defending Fidel Castro from the extraordinary attempts to take his life. From lethal poisons to plastic explosives to bazookas, Escalante introduces and describes an array of assassination plots and historical figures and depicts the ensuing cat-and-mouse game in the midst of the Cold War.

What happens when you venture outside the boundaries of a prepackaged travel experience and truly expose yourself to the history, economics, and culture of a country other than your own? We are all familiar with the Cuban cliché: decaying colonial architecture, soulful salsa dancing, refreshing cocktails by the seaside - paradise, in a nutshell. We also share a superficial understanding of Cuba’s troubled political history and economic struggles over the last decades.

Enthralling History offers a vivid dive into the revolutionary turmoil that changed the world. Discover the fiery spirit of a nation forged in rebellion and the heroes who led the charge toward freedom.

In The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Porwancher debunks a string of myths about the origins of this founding father to arrive at a startling conclusion: Hamilton, in all likelihood, was born and raised Jewish. For more than two centuries, his youth in the Caribbean has remained shrouded in mystery. Hamilton himself wanted it that way, and most biographers have simply assumed he had a Christian boyhood. With a detective's persistence and a historian's rigor, Porwancher upends that assumption.

This audiobook narrated by Tony Chiroldes traces the multifaceted history of Puerto Rico from pre-Columbian times to today.

Este libro conjuga en breve síntesis el análisis de problemas fundamentales de la historia de Cuba con la información indispensable para comprender su peculiar evolución. Desde una perspectiva de "larga duración", el pasado cubano es examinado en sus aspectos más sobresalientes, plasmándolo en una narración de secuencia cronológica que atiende a la formación y transformación de las estructuras económicas y sociales de la isla, sin perder la vista a los protagonistas y a los diferentes escenarios de su actuación.

The 30-year regime of Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier, who ruled between 1957 and 1986, was arguably the most repressive in the Western hemisphere. Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier looks at how the father and son duo rose to power, and the results of their tight grip over Haiti.

On January 12, 2010, a major earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of people died, and the greater part of the capital was demolished. Dr. Paul Farmer, U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, who had worked in the country for nearly thirty years treating infectious diseases like tuberculosis and AIDS, and former President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, had just begun to work on an extensive development plan to improve living conditions in Haiti.

Pirates dominate movie box-office profits, they are theme park entertainment, and they occupy a place in popular culture that has outlasted the era when they originally ruled the seas. Contemporary audiences who are safe from the pistols and cutlasses of the men who sailed the Caribbean, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans to prey upon ships and claim their cargo may find it hard to reconcile the perceived glamour of Captain Jack Sparrow with the authentic bloodlust and greed of the real pirates who killed without conscience, and ravaged, bribed, and robbed their way into legend.

In 1845 London, an engineer, philosopher, philanthropist, and bold-faced charlatan John Adolphus Etzler has invented machines that he thinks will transform the division of labor and free all men. He forms a collective called the Tropical Emigration Society (TES) and recruits a variety of London citizens to take his machines and his misguided ideas to form a protosocialist, utopian community in the British colony of Trinidad. Among his recruits is a teenage boy (and the audiobook's narrator) named Willy Tucker, who falls head-over-heels for the enthralling and wise Marguerite Whitechurch. Coming from the gentry, Marguerite is a world away from Willy's laboring class. As the voyage continues, and their love for one another strengthens, Willy and Marguerite prove themselves to be the true socialists aboard ship, their actions and adventures standing in stark contrast to Etzler's disconnected theories.” Robert Antoni's tragic historical novel, accented with West Indian cadences and captivating humor, provides an unforgettable glimpse into nineteenth-century Trinidad & Tobago.

La Revolución haitiana fue una rebelión de esclavos que comenzó en 1791 en la colonia francesa de Saint-Domingue, conocida ahora como Haití. En esta pequeña isla los tiranos fueron los dueños de esclavos, gente que no solo privaba de libertad a sus esclavos, sino que también pensaba que estaba justificado quitarles la vida. La Revolución haitiana empezó a cambiar la imagen de los esclavos en el mundo. Aunque costó otros 100 años erradicar la esclavitud en occidente, era imposible ignorar el paralelismo entre lo que los americanos y los franceses hicieron a los esclavos.

The history of African Americans has been complicated and controversial. While some will fight against racism, others deny the severity of it throughout the ages. Whether or not the issue is as serious as it used to be is a separate topic for debate. You will learn more about slavery, the rise of the cotton market in the Southern states, the abolitionism of slavery, segregation, and individuals like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X who have made a significant impact on the common perspective on these issues. Many things have changed over the past two centuries. Let’s find out what.

Are you interested in Caribbean history? More specifically, in the Arawakan people? One of the indigenous tribes of the Caribbean, the Arawakans are a fascinating study in how culture and social order can be disrupted and wiped out by one historical event - the colonizers’ arrival. This account explores the Arawakan people and their culture in detail, together with an exploration of the events surrounding Christopher Columbus’s arrival and what followed - the Arawakans were forced to change their social institutions and forget. Explore their culture and social institutions: