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St. Barthelemy, affectionately known as "St. Barth" or "St. Barts," is a small island in the French West Indies. It occupies only 8.3 square miles and is distinctly different from most of the Caribbean islands. St. Barth's interesting history of first Spanish then Swedish then French sovereignty has given St. Barth a unique, now predominantly French, culture. St. Barth's natural beauty and absence of high-rises, casinos, or crowded beaches make it a haven for vacationers and a popular destination of the rich and famous (David Letterman, Mikhail Barishnikov, Martha Stewart, Princess Di, among others, frequent or have houses there). This beautiful book depicts in photographs and words the heart and soul of the island.
In this comprehensive study of Cuban politics, Rhoda Rabkin examines the institutions, policies, and performance of the revolutionary socialist experiment in Cuba. The work thoroughly addresses the major issues debated by scholars concerning the Cuban revolutionary experience. These include: the development "impasse" of pre-revolutionary Cuba, rates of revolutionary socio-economic progress, "militarization" of revolutionary Cuba, succession politics, respect for human rights, and the relevance of the Cuban model to other developing countries. Rabkin analyzes with particular care the tension between popular participation and the often extra-institutional leadership role of Fidel Castro. Rabkin provides her readers with an honest, objective synthesis of contemporary scholarship on the Cuban Revolution.
Blackbeard’s extraordinary life of excess during the Golden Age of Piracy ignited a reputation that struck terror into men’s hearts from Virginia to Barbados. Leading a flotilla of ships through the clear waters of the Indies, he left in his wake the image of a "ranting, roaring, swaggering, swearing" sea captain that is still remembered today. Blackbeard’s life on the high seas, chasing wealth, freedom, and power, ended in a bloody battle that ultimately marked a turning point in history. This book accompanies a multimillion-dollar BBC-National Geographic drama that explores the reality of the man behind the beard. Far from the caricature of films and novels, Blackbeard was a complex character who was as charming as he was ruthless. The atrocities he indulged in, and how they eventually proved to be his undoing, are here explored through a fresh appraisal of surviving contemporary documents. Today, we might associate pirates with peg-legs, parrots and dreamy tropical islands, but the disturbing truth is the stuff of nightmares.
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The Cuban missile crisis was the most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War and the most perilous moment in American history. In this dramatic narrative written especially for students and general readers, Sheldon M. Stern, longtime historian at the John F. Kennedy Library, enables the reader to follow the often harrowing twists and turns of the crisis. Based on the author’s authoritative transcriptions of the secretly recorded ExComm meetings, the book conveys the emotional ambiance of the meetings by capturing striking moments of tension and anger as well as occasional humorous intervals. Unlike today's readers, the participants did not have the luxury of knowing how this potentially catastrophic showdown would turn out, and their uncertainty often gives their discussions the nerve-racking quality of a fictional thriller. As President Kennedy told his advisers, "What we are doing is throwing down a card on the table in a game which we don't know the ending of." Stern documents that JFK and his administration bore a substantial share of the responsibility for the crisis. Covert operations in Cuba, including efforts to kill Fidel Castro, had convinced Nikita Khrushchev that only the deployment of nuclear weapons could protect Cuba from imminent attack. However, President Kennedy, a seasoned Cold Warrior in public, was deeply suspicious of military solutions to political problems and appalled by the prospect of nuclear war. He consistently steered policy makers away from an apocalyptic nuclear conflict, measuring each move and countermove with an eye to averting what he called, with stark eloquence, "the final failure."
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For 200 years after 1650 the West Indies were the most fought-over colonies in the world, as Europeans made and lost immense fortunes growing and trading in sugar - a commodity so lucrative that it was known as white gold. Young men, beset by death and disease, an ocean away from the moral anchors of life in Britain, created immense dynastic wealth but produced a society poisoned by war, sickness, cruelty and corruption. The Sugar Barons explores the lives and experiences of those whose fortunes rose and fell with the West Indian empire. From the ambitious and brilliant entrepreneurs, to the grandees wielding power across the Atlantic, to the inheritors often consumed by decadence, disgrace and madness, this is the compelling story of how a few small islands and a handful of families decisively shaped the British Empire.
