CUBA

What This Book Covers

1. Chapter One - The Sugar Kingdom
2. Chapter Two - The Bearded Storm
3. Chapter Three - The Red Flag Rises
4. Chapter Four - Bay of Pigs
5. Chapter Five - The Missile Crisis
6. Chapter Six - How the CIA Turned Into a Cartoon Villain
7. Chapter Seven - The Base That Time Forgot
8. Chapter Eight - Che Goes Global
9. Chapter Nine - Isolation and Survival
10. Chapter Ten - Cigars and Sanctions
11. Chapter Eleven - Obama Goes to Havana
12. Chapter Twelve - The Ghost of the Cold War

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE The Sugar Kingdom BEFORE IT WAS a battlefield, Cuba was a business. And business was good. For America. For most of the 20th century, Cuba wasn’t just another island. It was America’s Caribbean playground. A steamy, glittering, rum-soaked colony of convenience. Close enough to reach by boat, but foreign enough to break the rules. The beaches were beautiful. The women were cheaper. And the sugar was sweet. By the early 1900s, Cuba’s entire economy was built around sugar plantations, many owned or controlled by American corporations. The U.S. didn’t just buy Cuban sugar. It ran the industry. By the 1920s, Americans owned over 60% of Cuba’s sugar mills, and nearly 80% of its export...