Samuel Farber introduces his book as a “work of historical synthesis [that] will challenge the conventional views common among both supporters and opponents of the present Cuban government” (p. 1). As a synthesis it is, at best, uneven. An inordinate amount of space is given to rehashing the academic studies of the 1960s and reprising data from the published sources on which they were based. All this effort is hardly necessary to dispose of the hoary theory that agents of the Soviet Union and the Cuban PSP (communist party) controlled the revolutionary movement before the 1959 overthrow of President Fulgencio Batista, and, once in power, proceeded to enact their secret agenda, or, conversely, that the Fidelista rebels were essentially social-democratic reformers who were pushed onto the communist path and into the arms of the USSR by the Cold War policies of the U.S. government in 1959 – 61. Farber’s extensive...
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