Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause

by Tom Gjelten

Book Overview

In this widely hailed book, NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten fuses the story of the Bacardi family and their famous rum business with Cuba's tumultuous experience over the last 150 years to produce a deeply entertaining historical narrative. The company Facundo Bacardi launched in Cuba in 1862 brought worldwide fame to the island, and in the decades that followed his Bacardi descendants participated in every aspect of Cuban life. With his intimate account...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143116320
• ISBN13: 9780143116325
• Release Date: August 2009
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba

Outstanding book! My father was an executive with Bacardi for 25 years. As such, I have some knowledge about the company, its history, and many of the events related in the book, as well as knowing many of the people written about in the book. The author has done a tremendous job in his research, and in getting the essence of the Bacardi family and, by extension, the Cuban story correct. This is not only a good read for anyone interested in the Bacardi story, but also a well written, and detailed chronicle of Cuban political history that goes back well beyond the Batista-Castro-Communist revloution times that are what people generally know about Cuba.

Really interesting story

this way of knowing the history of a country by knowing the history of a "Saga" or family, is really amazing. It's a ways you can understand a lot, about feelings, emotions and so. I think that the author could know something else about the history of CAtalonia to understand Facundo, Emilio...

A very nice read

There has recently been a renewed interest in pre-revolutionary Cuba. This stems from the fact that Cuba today is so un-romantic, so poor and stricken with prostitution, that peopel want to understand not only the pre-history of Castro but also the time before Castro. This has given us new studies of the Mafia in Cuba (Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It to the Revolution) and recent books on the Americans who fought in the revolution. This book examines a previously unstudied subject, the history of the Bacardi family and Cuba. Most would have assumed the family, being some of the wealthier citizens of the island, would not have been Castro supporters or progressive in the least bit. But the truth is quite different. The patriarch of the dynasty was a fighter in the original war against Spain in the 1890s and by the 1950s they were disillusioned with Batista. This is an excellent history of this family and its biography, which in many ways is the biography of Cuba itself in this period. A very nice book that fills both a gap in history and sheds light on a fascinating story. Seth J. Frantzman

A Double Pleasure to Read

Looking for insights on Cuban history, culture, politics, Castro--this is a good historical exposition of a country that has gone through more turmoil and experiments in government than perhaps any other in the Western hemisphere. Looking for an informative and exciting narrative about a family owned company--this is a very moving story of a strong-willed entrepreneurial family blessed with three masterful CEOs in succession who figured out how to succeed worldwide despite being headquartered in a relatively unsophisticated financial backwater. Put these two stories together and the result is the proverbial whole being greater than the sum of its parts: an excellent journey juxtaposing financial acumen combined with patriotism, on the one hand, against a variety of dismaying governmental experiments, on the other, including Spanish colonialism, years of revolution, US intervention, embryonic democracy, dictatorship, and a Marxist state economic system. This was obviously a labor of love for Gjelten, a first rate NPR reporter and analyst, as reflected in the source documentation provided unobtrusively at the end of the book, the very thorough and useful Bacardi family tree and the extensive photograph collection that brings even more life to the already well-drawn characters.

Exceptional Book

I am Cuban-born, and have throughly enjoyed this book and am buying copies to send to all my children, one of which is NPR's Baghdad Bureau Chief. It is historically accurate, very well written, and portrays Cuba and the Bacardi family with knowledge and understanding. It is truly a brilliant achievement and recommend anyone who is interested in Cuba to read it.