Spanning politics and art, music and baseball, Cuba on the Verge is
a timely look at a society's profound transformation--from inside and
out
Change looms in Cuba.
Just ninety miles from United States shores yet inaccessible to most
Americans until recently, Cuba fascinates as much as it confounds.
Images of the Buena Vista Social Club, wild nights at the Tropicana,
classic cars, and bearded rebels clinching cigars only scrape the
surface of Cuba's complex history and legacy. As the US and Cuba move
toward the normalization of diplomatic relations after an epic
fifty-six-year standoff, we find ourselves face-to-face with one of the
few places in the world that has been off limits to most Americans. We
know that Cuba is changing, but from what and into what? And what does
this change mean for the Cuban people as well as for the rest of the
world?
Standing on both sides of the divide, twelve of our most celebrated
writers investigate this period of momentous transition in Cuba on the
Verge. These essays span the spectrum, from Carlos Manuel Álvarez's
story of being among the last generation of Cubans to be raised under
Fidel Castro to Patricia Engel's look at how Cuba's capital has changed
through her years of riding across it with her taxi driver friend; from
The New Yorker's Jon Lee Anderson (who traveled with President Obama
on the first trip to Cuba by an American president since the twenties)
on being a foreigner in Cuba during the Special Period to Francisco
Goldman on the Tropicana, then and now, to Leonardo Padura on the
religion that is Cuban baseball.
Cuba on the Verge is the definitive account of--and a unique glimpse
at--a moment of upheaval and reinvention whose effects promise to
reverberate across years and nations.
