On Cuba

Jonathan M. Hansen is a senior lecturer at Harvard University and the author of Guantánamo: An American History and The Lost Promise of Patriotism: Debating American Identity, 1890-1920. His writing has been published in The New York Times, Huffington Post, and The Guardian, among other places. His most recent book is Young Castro: The Making of a Revolutionary (Simon & Schuster), a book that challenges readers to put aside the caricature of a bearded, cigar-munching, anti-American hot head to discover how Castro became the dictator who acted as a thorn in the side of US presidents for nearly half a century. The first American historian in a generation to gain access to the Castro archives in Havana, Jonathan Hansen was able to secure cooperation from Castro’s family and closest confidants, gaining access to hundreds of never-before-seen letters and to interviews with people he was the first to ask for their impressions of the man. The result is a nuanced and penetrating portrait of a figure who was determined to be a leader—a man at once brilliant, arrogant, bold, vulnerable and all too human. A man who, having grown up on an island that felt like a colonial cage, was compelled to lead his country to independence.

Martin Garbus is one of America’s top trial lawyers. An expert at every level of civil and criminal trial, and litigation, he has appeared before the United States Supreme Court in leading First Amendment cases. He is the author of Tough Talk: How I Fought for Writers, Comics, Bigots, and the American Way and his latest book, North of Havana: The Untold Story of Dirty Politics, Secret Diplomacy, and of Trial of the Cuban Five (The New Press). North of Havana tells the story of a spy ring sent by Cuba in the early 1990s to infiltrate anti-Communist extremists in Miami. Erroneously charged by the U.S. government in connection with the 1996 shootdown of two planes circulating anti-Castro leaflets over Havana, the spies—in the absence of evidence—were convicted in 2000 of conspiracy to commit espionage and murder. Set in Miami and Havana, North of Havana is a mesmerizing tale of international intrigue, espionage, and political gamesmanship that continues to play a shaping role in American foreign policy and presidential elections. In the process, the books shows how the justice system can be, and is, subverted for political purposes and gives readers insight into one of the most fascinating legal cases of our times.