Guevara, Also Known as Che

by Paco Ignacio Taibo II and    II

Book Overview

Ernesto Guevara es una figura clave de la cultura y la historia que va mas alla del mito: heraldo de la Revolucion latinoamericana, hombre que vivio al limite, hoy es un simbolo de la lucha social en... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312155395
• ISBN13: 9780312155391
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 691 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Eloquent

Taibo II has a beautiful writing style and is extremely knowledgeable on Che's life. His book reads with more credence, he interviewed many people who had various encounters with Che from a regular soldier, to a campensino, and his family. He gives a very interesting look at Che, and shows the different sides of him from a commander who shot a soldier to a man who gave a splint to a bird with a hurt leg. It also comes with a treasure trove of pictures of Che, which is always exciting in a serious book.

Che Alive...as they never wanted you to be...

As other reviewers have said, this is the best of the Che biographies. Paco Taibo does the research and tells the story in a way that brings life to a myth as few other biographers in any era have been able to do. This is Ernesto Guevara as he lived and died, and you can understand how he became "El Che" the icon of the "Unredeemed America", and what drove him inexorably towards the bullet that ended his life in the dilapidated schoolhouse at La Higuera. For anyone who has seen "The Motorcycle Diaries", this book is necessary reading. I bought it five years ago and read pretty much the whole thing in a couple days. Since then, I will often grab this book and start reading at some random point, and not put it down for an hour or so. As mentioned by someone before, once you start turning the pages it is difficult to stop. The reason for this is twofold. First, the life portrayed here was an epic journey and second, Taibo is a not only a storyteller par excellence, but has a keen sense of the history of the times and is able to inject his own commentary to illuminate many of the seminal events during the course of Che's life. He is also relating to Che from a Latin American perspective, distinctly different from what North American readers may be used to. For instance, his Mexican roots are in evidence by his comparison of the legendary Mexican comedic actor Cantinflas to Che's own occasional sense of the absurdity of life. It is these touches that also help set this biography apart from the others on Che. We see another side of the legend. The biography starts with Che's family in Argentina, and their somewhat bohemian background. We learn how the young Ernesto suffered greatly from asthma, an affliction that would shape his stoic character all his life. We also learn that at an early age he followed the Spanish Civil War and the battles of the Second World War, and not only how the motorcycle trip with Alberto Granado helped form his outlook, but how he was forced to flee for his life from Guatemala as the elected government of Arbenz was violently toppled by Uncle Sam. This was the event that caused Che to pick up a rifle and give up on democracy as a means to effect change in Latin America, as well as made him willing to be incinerated in an atomic holocaust rather than surrender to a U.S. invasion of Cuba. The history of the Cuban Revolution and Che's work for Fidel's government is fascinating reading, but perhaps the most impressive parts of the book were the last few chapters detailing the ill-fated Congo and Bolivian expeditions. The Bolivian campaign reads like a funeral dirge, but even here we see the determination and self-effacing humor of the protaganist shining through til the end. The last chapter is an inspiring summation of a life lived in the most uncompromising manner, and is probably the best eulogy written for that life. One senses the author's personal attachment to the subject, which by this time has firmly become the reader

The Most Enjoyable of Che's Biographies

In the US, Paco Taibo II is better known within the mystery readers' crowd for his accomplished police stories with a touch of irony and a shrewd writing style. For this reason with certain apprehension I started reading this biography. In fact it was the first complete and serious Che's bio I have ever read. Later I grabbed Jon Lee Anderson's one... Of all Che's bios Paco's is the most enchanting one. It may lack the huge documention of Anderson's book, but it compensates it with an amazing style. Paco cannot divorce his own admiration of Che from his subject, but, hey, that is exactly why this book becomes so much enjoyable. I still recall grabbing the book (700 hundred pages!) one morning and going that same night to bed with the book in my hands! I couldn't stop reading it! Che's story is reflected under the light of an amazing storyteller. The episodes of Che's story are exquisitely threaded together in a masterful way. His life becomes flesh and blood in Paco's hands. The icon, the symbol of rebellion and struggle for social justice turns a man, an incredible, passionate and admirable human being throughout the book. The end cannot be better: it is ghostly but hopeful with a lot of energy and sadness and beauty: a song to Latin American history of struggle.

BUY IT!

I was walking around wearing one of those 'Che' T-shirts and a guy asked me some questions about him. I felt pretty stupid not knowing more than I did. So I started reading about Che. That was 3 years ago. I have read his diaries, speeches, FBI files, everything I could find....THIS was the BEST. The author is truly a Che fan, but he still points out mistakes Che made, but the best thing is he provides everything in its context. He builds the background of where Che came from, what his life was. The reader FEELS 50's 60's Latin America so you can really emphasize with the actions and emotions of the integral characters. Sum it up, even though it was a factual biography I still was totally engrossed reading 500 some pages in about 3 days, and still re-reading it. A pleasure.

Mission Impossible

Taibo good naturedly portrays Che's down to earth blemishes, like a loving brother who understands the strengths and weakenesses a family member. With plenty of direct quotes, the only way to get more ideas on Che's experience in the Sierra Maestra after reading this would seem to be from reading Che's own writing. The overall picture I saw painted in Taibo's book was not that Che accomplished little in his short (compared to others like Mao) revolutionary life (asked shorty before his death what he was thinking, "I'm thinking of the immortality of the revolution, so feared by those you serve."), but that what Che aspired to was too difficult, too complicated, to impossible for a mere mortal. To his nervous executioner moments before death, "Take it easy, you're going to kill a man."