Description

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From America’s number one Cuba reporter, PEN award–winning investigative journalist Ann Louise Bardach, comes the big book on Cuba we’ve all been waiting for. An incisive and spirited portrait of the twentieth century’s wiliest political survivor and his fiefdom, Cuba Confidential is the gripping story of the shattered families and warring personalities that lie at the heart of the forty-three-year standoff between Miami and Havana.

Famous to many Americans for her cover stories and media appearances, Ann Louise Bardach has been covering Cuba for a decade. She’s talked to the crooks, spooks and politicians who have made history, and to their hired assassins and confidants. Based on exclusive interviews with Fidel Castro, his sister Juanita, his former brother-in-law Rafael Díaz-Balart, the family of Elián González, the friends and family of the legendary American fugitive Robert Vesco, the intrepid terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, and the inner circles of Jeb Bush and the late exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, Cuba Confidential exposes the hardball take-no-prisoners tactics of the Cuban exile leadership, and its manipulation and exploitation by ten American presidents.

Bardach homes in on Fidel Castro and his cronies, taking us closer than we’ve ever been—and on the militant exiles who have devoted their lives, with CIA connivance, to trying to eliminate him. From Calle Ocho to Juan Miguel González’s kitchen table in Cárdenas, from Guantánamo Bay to Union City to Washington, D.C., Ann Louise Bardach serves up an unforgettable portrait of Cuba and its exiles.

About the Author

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Ann Louise Bardach is a PEN award-winning investigative journalist who has covered Cuba for more than a decade for the New York Times,  Vanity Fair, where she was a Contributing Editor for many years, and many other national publications. She currently writes the Global Buzz column for Newsweek International and has appeared on 60 Minutes, Today, Dateline, CNN, The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball, Charlie Rose, and NPR, among others. She is also the editor of Cuba: A Travelers Literary Companion and is a Visiting Professor of International Journalism at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Praise For…

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“Bardach knows Miami and Cuba from the inside out . . . Her contacts are wide-ranging in both places, her research is thorough and meticulous..” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“An extraordinary examination…. A well-researched book.” --The Miami Herald

“The old story of the battle between Castro and his foes is refreshingly retold…. An investigative journalist specializing in Cuba, Bardach has been examining the activities of exile leaders in South Florida for years…Bardach’s portrayal of Castro is as unappealing as any ever drawn.” –The Washington Post

“A long overdue examination of what lies behind the long-running feud between Fidel Castro’s Cuba and Miami’s Cuban-American exiles . . . Bardach is the first author who has tried to look at the rift from both sides.” —St. Petersburg Times

“Bardach brings together the fruits of her reporting on Cubans on both sides of the Florida straits . . . [and] generates some helpful insights. . . . She is particularly sharp-eyed about Cuban families.” —The Economist

“The old story of the battle between Castro and his foes is refreshingly retold. . . . Compelling. . . . A good book for those whose curiosity about Cubans has only recently been awakened.” –The Washington Post

“The work of a reporter at the top of her game. Bardach takes a fascinating new look at the case of Elián González and then spins it into a compelling reexamination of the tortured relationship between the United States and Castro’s Cuba. With Bardach’s fresh take on the young boy and the old man, you’ll never look at either one the same way again.” –Jeffrey Toobin

“Bardach brings together the fruits of her reporting on Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits . . . and generates some helpful insights. [She] is particularly sharp-eyed about Cuban families.” –The Economist

“If our political establishment knew a tenth as much about Cuba, or cared half as much about it, as does Ann Louise Bardach, both the United States and Cuba would be more open societies.” –Christopher Hitchens

“Bardach long ago established herself as America’s most lucid, courageous, and well-informed observer of Cuban realities on both sides of the Florida Straits. This book is a tour de force, the definitive work on the still ongoing Cuban civil war.”–David Rieff, author of The Exile

“Whatever your views on Cuba, Cuba Confidential offers a valuable treasure of inside information and rich insights on an international controversy that has deep implications for American politics.”–Lou Cannon, author of President Reagan

“An illuminating portrait. . . . Bardach writes with an awareness of the Big Picture. . . . Powerful, evenhanded, thoroughly edifying.”–Kirkus Reviews (starred)