History, Cuba: a New History by Richard Gott

In looking for a history to use for Cuba, my first impulse was to look for a biography of Fidel. I loved the books I read on Lenin and Ataturk and thought surely Fidel was every bit as central to modern Cuba as those two were to Russia and Turkey respectively. But I think historians (and hence history) benefit from distance. Both Lenin and Ataturk are controversial figures even today, but time has cooled some of the passion and that makes finding a balanced biography a bit easier.

The passion around Fidel remains white hot. I expect 20 years from now, with access to archives and time to reflect, a good biography will emerge - but I don't think that has happened yet. So I thought perhaps I should broaden the subject and seek not just the story of the Revolution but something that puts that event into a context. Even there one finds problems. Cuba’s history is tumultuous and often tragic. Even its present puts it in the middle of epic East-West and North-South struggles. Many authors seem to succumb to the temptation to tell Cuba’s story through the narrative of their own perspective. At least that is the sense you get from people who have left their reviews of books online. Many books were simultaneously praised and condemned for the conclusions they reached. For me it was a bad sign. I was looking for balance.

In Gott’s book I think I found it. Gott is a British journalist turned historian. A 1960s leftist he first visits Cuba in 1963 attracted by the romance of the Revolution. By the time he writes the book some 40 years later, that first blush has worn off. It seems to me he presents the revolution and current system in a not unrealistic yet not unsympathetic light. He puts Cuba today into its larger context beginning the story before Columbus and benefiting from the detachment gained by not being either Cuban or American. He does not have a dog in the fight and can call it as he sees it. At the end I think he accomplished what I always hope to get from history - a better understanding of why the present is the way it is.