Back from the Future: Cuba under Castro - Softcover

One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1994
"This important book . . . is an ambitious attempt to provide a broad overview of Cuba under the Castro regime. . . . It makes for very sober reading that specialists and policymakers should take note of."--Foreign Affairs

"On the whole, the image of the hero [Castro] and his rescued island had been replaced by that of a tyrant and a subjugated kingdom; neither image, though--as Eckstein shows--truly reflects the complex facts. In any history of present-day Cuba, Castro must emerge as the protagonist, and Back from the Future provides a wealth of information that allows the reader to make some sense of the man."--Alberto Manguel, The Times Literary Supplement

Susan Eckstein describes how and explains why Cuban Communism has been misperceived and misunderstood abroad. Concealed behind Marxist-Leninist rhetoric and Castro's autocratic single-party rule has been a government promoting a cradle-to-grave welfare state, tolerating market reforms, foreign investment, Western trade, and hard currency "internationalism." Not only has Castro's Cuba been less ideologically driven by Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy than has heretofore been believed, it also has been less omnipotent.