Fidel's Cuba

Fidel's Cuba: A Revolution in Pictures reexamines Fidel Castro's storybook victory on its fortieth anniversary with black-and-white portraits of unforgettable power. Through the lenses of Osvaldo and Roberto Salas, Fidel's hand-picked photographers, the rich tapestry of the Revolution, its remarkable characters and events, is chronicled with an insider's closeness and a humanity unrivaled by any other book on Cuba. Over one hundred pictures - never before published in the United States - follow Castro from his early, clean-shaven days of raising money in Manhattan for the Revolution to the rugged Sierra Maestra mountains where he led his famed revolt with Che Guevara. Here is the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion in startling images of destruction; Ernest Hemingway and Fidel in their only meeting; and the proud faces of the Cubans, laboring in sugarcane fields and factories by day and in the throes of nocturnal ecstasy in Santeria rituals and all-night music festivals in the streets of Havana. Roberto Salas's reminiscences serve as extended captions for each photograph, taking readers up treacherous mountain passes with the revolutionaries, through cigar-smoke-filled back rooms with Fidel and Che, and onto the crisis-charged floor of the United Nations Assembly.