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Loading... Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba.and Then Lost It to the Revolutionby T. J. English
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  ethanw | Aug 4, 2009 |  Very entertaining and informative book on the activities of Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano. (  ) millardc | Jul 14, 2009 | A great listen--the audiobook narrator sounds kinda mafioso. Learned a lot about American organized crime history, Caribbean history, Castro, Cuban politics, the 1950s tourism and entertainment worlds, and even JFK (Havana orgy and conspiracy theories)--all through the lens of the American mobsters and the Havana casinos they owned. Followed it up by watching Sydney Pollack's "Havana" w/Robert Redford about the week leading up to Castro & the revolution's arrival in Havana on New Year's 1958/1959...movie can be tedious but seems to get the details and vibe right. (  ) FranklynCee | May 17, 2009 | Having been born in 1973 and grown up in Australia, I’ve never really known that much about Cuba. From film and television I knew that smoking Cuban cigars was naughty because the U.S. had a trade embargo with them and any country that wanted to be friends with the U.S. respected that. From the same sources, I knew that there were many Cubans in Florida and that the media reported them to be mostly rabidly anti-Castro. I knew that people routinely risked the seas to escape from Cuba in a similar way that my best friend in high school had escaped from Communist Poland. But at the same time I was vaguely aware that perhaps once Castro had been a man of more democratic principles, loved by the Cubans before they came to fear that they may disappear at night never to be heard from again. After all, activists both trendy and genuine wore T-shirts with Castro’s once-partner’s face on it and Streisand listed Guevara as one of her father figures in the live version of “Poppa can you hear me” alongside Gandhi. The implication was that, as in so many places around the world, the U.S. had had some role to play in the making of their monster to the South. The focus of Havana Nocturne is the mob in Cuba and their attempt to create their ultimate haven, within easy reach of everything that was good in America and without any thought for the Cuban people living in fear and poverty outside their Casino walls. T. J. English expertly, and necessarily, weaves the stories of the mob and the revolution together to create a thoroughly engrossing read that connects the dots so deliberately left unconnected for so many years. He leaves aside the demonization of any one of his true characters and, without pulling any punches, shows us flawed human beings and gives us greed, revenge and human failing as the ultimate culprits in the mess that is Cuba. I’ll feel a lot more educated about the whole issue now as the U.S. begins to deal with a post-Castro Cuba. Whether this tiny country can recover from their decades of corruption, trade sanctions and U.S. meddling will be a test with international relevance. ( ) Beith | Oct 2, 2008 | Very interesting read - it gives a thorough history of the mob involvement on the island, and how that affected the revolution. It stays away from the titillating and focuses on Meyer Lansky, almost as an anti-hero. ( ) osodani | Sep 15, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0061147710, Hardcover)In modern-day Havana, the remnants of the glamorous past are everywhere—the old hotel-casinos, vintage American cars, and flickering neon signs speak of a bygone era that is widely familiar and often romanticized, but little understood. In Havana Nocturne, T. J. English offers a riveting, multifaceted true tale of organized crime, political corruption, roaring nightlife, revolution, and international conflict that interweaves the dual stories of the Mob in Havana and the event that would overshadow it, the Cuban Revolution. As the Cuban people labored under a violently repressive regime throughout the 1950s, Mob leaders Meyer Lansky and Charles "Lucky" Luciano turned their eye to Havana. To them, Cuba was the ultimate dream, the greatest hope for the future of the American Mob in the post-Prohibition years of intensified government crackdowns. But when it came time to make their move, it was Lansky, the brilliant Jewish mobster, who reigned supreme. Having cultivated strong ties with the Cuban government and in particular the brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista, Lansky brought key mobsters to Havana to put his ambitious business plans in motion. Before long, the Mob, with Batista's corrupt government in its pocket, owned the biggest luxury hotels and casinos in Havana, launching an unprecedented tourism boom complete with the most lavish entertainment, the world's biggest celebrities, the most beautiful women, and gambling galore. But their dreams collided with those of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and others who would lead the country's disenfranchised to overthrow their corrupt government and its foreign partners—an epic cultural battle that English captures in all its sexy, decadent, ugly glory. Bringing together long-buried historical information with English's own research in Havana—including interviews with the era's key survivors—Havana Nocturne takes readers back to Cuba in the years when it was a veritable devil's playground for mob leaders. English deftly weaves together the parallel stories of the Havana Mob—featuring notorious criminals such as Santo Trafficante Jr. and Albert Anastasia—and Castro's 26th of July Movement in a riveting, up-close look at how the Mob nearly attained its biggest dream in Havana—and how Fidel Castro trumped it all with the Cuban Revolution. (retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:10:41 -0500) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
This is a nice companion read to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao if you, like me, are new to Latin American history. (