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• ISBN13: 9781416562337
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Numerous attempts have been made to get Castro to tell his own story. But only now, in the twilight of his years, has he been prepared to set out the details of his remarkable biography for the world to read. This book is nothing less than his living testament. As he told reporters, his desire to finish checking its text was the one thing that kept him going through his recent illness. He presented a copy of the book in its Spanish edition to his compadre President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

In these pages, Castro narrates a compelling chronicle that spans the harshness of his elementary school teachers; the early failures of the revolution; his intense comradeship with Che Guevara and their astonishing, against-all-odds victory over the dictator Batista; the Cuban perspective on the Bay of Pigs and the ensuing missile crisis; the active role of Cuba in African independence movements (especially its large military involvement in fighting apartheid South Africa in Angola); his relations with prominent public figures such as Boris Yeltsin, Pope John Paul II, and Saddam Hussein; and his dealings with no less than ten successive American presidents, from Eisenhower to George W. Bush.

Castro talks proudly of increasing life expectancy in Cuba (now longer than in the United States); of the half million students in Cuban universities; and of the training of seventy thousand Cuban doctors nearly half of whom work abroad, assisting the poor in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He is confronted with a number of thorny issues, including democracy and human rights, discrimination toward homosexuals, and the continuing presence of the death penalty on Cuban statute books. Along the way he shares intimacies about more personal matters: the benevolent strictness of his father, his successful attempt to give up cigars, his love of Ernest Hemingway's novels, and his calculation that by not shaving he saves up to ten working days each year.

Drawing on more than one hundred hours of interviews with Ignacio Ramonet, a knowledgeable and trusted interlocutor, this spoken autobiography will stand as the definitive record of an extraordinary life lived in turbulent times.

• ISBN13: 9780393068993
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

• ISBN13: 9781603967013
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Surprisingly, Juanita chose this year, 2009, to bear her soul in an extraordinary journey through the triumphs and tragedies of her life and, consequently, the events that have shaped the lives of millions of people during the past fifty years. This is the first-hand testimony of a person who, from the moment of her birth, was connected by the deepest bond to two of the most notable political figures of contemporary Latin American history: Fidel and Raul Castro, her brothers. It is, therefore, the most intimate and accurate analysis any person can do of their own kin: mother, father, grandparents, and brothers, the famous and those that chose to stay out of the limelight.

It is the account of a woman that severed all ties, a woman that in 1964 joined the Cuban exile in the United States. It is a story for Cubans and non-Cubans alike the story Juanita Castro owed each and every one of us; a story that had not been told until today.
Maria Antonieta Collins

Spanish Description:

Hace diez anos Juanita Castro se decidio a escribir sus memorias y gracias a una doble y fortuita coincidencia: ser su amiga y ser periodista, fue que comenzamos a trabajar en ellas. Al terminarlas en 1999, simplemente decidio no publicarlas, y a lo largo de la decada, ambas compartimos el secreto de guardar el libro, -el primero que yo habia escrito-.

Sorpresivamente, en este 2009 decidio abrir su alma en un extraordinario recorrido por el triunfo y la tragedia de su vida, y por ende, en los acontecimientos que han marcado las vidas de millones en los ultimos cincuenta anos. Esta es una gran historia para cubanos y para quienes no lo son. Es el testimonio contado en primera persona, por alguien que estuvo desde que naciera, junto a dos de los personajes politicos de la historia contemporanea de America Latina: sus hermanos Fidel y Raul. Es por lo tanto una radiografia la mas cercana y fidedigna- que alguien pudiera hacer de los suyos: de su madre, de su padre, de los abuelos y de todos los hermanos incluyendo los famosos y los que decidieron no serlo.

Es el recuento de la mujer que rompio con todo, y quien en 1964 vino a vivir al exilio cubano en los Estados Unidos. Es la historia que Juanita Castro nos debia a todos, la que nunca ha contado a nadie, y aqui la tienen.

Maria Antonieta Collins

In a close study of the fifteen months from November 1956 to July 1958, when the urban underground leadership was dominant, Sweig examines the debate between the two groups over whether to wage guerrilla warfare in the countryside or armed insurrection in the cities, and is the first to document the extent of Castro's cooperation with the Llano. She unveils the essential role of the urban underground, led by such figures as Frank País, Armando Hart, Haydée Santamaria, Enrique Oltuski, and Faustino Pérez, in controlling critical decisions on tactics, strategy, allocation of resources, and relations with opposition forces, political parties, Cuban exiles, even the United States--contradicting the standard view of Castro as the primary decision maker during the revolution.

In revealing the true relationship between Castro and the urban underground, Sweig redefines the history of the Cuban Revolution, offering guideposts for understanding Cuban politics in the 1960s and raising intriguing questions for the future transition of power in Cuba."

Introduction by Michael Taber. Appendixes: "Cuba in Angola" by Gabriel García Márquez; "Resolution on International Policy," and "Cuba’s View of the Revolution in Latin America and the Caribbean," index.