According to Lenin's blueprint for the 'dictatorship of the proletariat',the state needs a constant one-party system of communists.Eventhough Lenin supported the scientific writings of Charles Darwin,Lenin believed that the people's will could be controlled and restricted by the state.History has proved him wrong.The loss of Fidel Castro would be the end of the Cuban-Leninist-Communist state.Fidel is a 'Leninist',and his brother Raul is a 'Stalinist'.Fidel was the fiery spark that kept the peasant's hopes alive.The 1959 revolution was an idealistic experiment in communist governing that quickly soured into stagnation and repression.Cuba has a very high literacy rate and advanced health-care for its Latin American people.Yet,the diesel fumes sicken the people,day in and day out.Sugar is a food-staple of poor people and still declining in global use.It does not seem appearant that Raul Castro will relinquish his authority,once he is crowned,'jefe supremo del pais por la gente'.His potentially stalinistic policies will be just as fettering and perhaps even worse than his older brother's edicts.-A soviet designed nuclear reactor will soon be operational,near Havana.The fate of this Chernobyl time-bomb is worrisome.And as with North Korea's quasi-communist leader,Kim Il Sun,the reigns of power are within the family.If socialist China continues its economic global ties,would Cuba secure Arabian oil via China?And cheap oil from Hugo Chavez?-Abdication of their rule would be the complete end of their influence and politically suicidal.So, who knows?Maybe a bearded Raul will try to board a Swiss jet and learn to ski the Alps?Hugo Chavez claims he is the communist of the campo,yet he is rhetorically quasi-Catholic and therefore European christian influenced.-This book is simply the best at showing the mental workings of Fidel Castro and why he took the role of 'Guerrilla Prince'.History is what happens when national leaders are busy making other plans.Learn about Castro's personal decisions in this book.I can only recommend reading this for understanding the charismatic personality of the world's oldest living ruler ,Fidel Castro.

This book gives you a view inside the political and military decision making of the Cuba communist regime. It is incredible to see how every major decision is controlled and dictated personally by Fidel Castro himself. The so-called Revolution is really nothing more than Fidel Castro's personal wishes and views. What the revolution wants and does is not determined by what the proletarian wants as he demagogically preaches. This book truly takes the mask away and shows the real dictatorial and egocentric personality of Fidel Castro for the world to see, putting him up there with other dictators like Nicolae Ceaucescu, Joseph Stalin and Kim Jong il. All of the Cuban communist government's crimes and all the suffering of the Cuban people will be well known to the rest of the world after his communist regime is no more.

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Este libro muestra una ventana dentro de las decisiones militares y políticas del régimen comunista Cubano. Es increíble ver como cada decisión de importancia es controlada y dictada personalmente por el propio Fidel Castro. La llamada revolución no es nada más que la visión y los deseos personales de Castro, lo que la revolución quiere y hace, no es determinado por el proletariado como Castro demagógicamente predica. Este libro realmente desenmascara y muestra los verdaderos rasgos dictatoriales y ego centristas de la personalidad de Fidel Castro. Ubicándolo en un mismo grupo con dictadores como Nicolae Ceaucescu, Joseph Stalin y Kim Jong il. Todos los crímenes del gobierno comunista Cubano y el sufrimiento del pueblo Cubano saldrán a la luz pública mundial cuando su régimen comunista deje de existir.

This is the best written biography of Fidel Castro. It covers almost all of his life focusing mostly on the political and military aspects. If you want to get a sense of society as a whole I would recommend reading Fidel Castro by Quirk but otherwise this is an excellent start to Castro's life. You could read this and feel that you have covered every relevant part of his life and then some. If you want to understand how Cuba was transformed into what it is today this is essential reading. Highly recommend.

In one corner, an American "bourgeois" woman named Georgie Anne Geyer. In the opposite corner, Fidel Castro. The opening bell rings! :-0

If I understand the "leftist" mindset at all well, there is no decision to be made here. Castro is right, and Geyer is wrong, and that ends that.

But -- unfortunately for that mindset -- Georgie Ann Geyer worked really hard in compiling her book, and conducted interviews with hundreds of people, and she knows an awful lot more about Fidel Castro than he knows about her. She knows that Castro was a killer, even in his university days. She knows that he was an absolutely ruthless seeker-of-power, like some others we have known (Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini...)

And, in his quest for absolute power, Castro was helped by another thing, not much discussed here. This was the idea that the current system is so corrupt, that anything else would be an improvement. We citizens of the planet Earth need to be very wary of ideas like this. For example, in Iran: the idea that the Shah had to go, that anything else would be an improvement. BZZT! WRONG! Thirty years of terrorist mullahs certainly put a big damper on that idea!

In the same way, the Cubans of long ago partied and had good times and never really dreamed that anyone could be worse than Batista. Of course, sooner or later, they woke up to the fact that they were being ruled by a thug who would never relinquish power, and who would creep into his senility crowned by Forbes magazine as one of the richest men in the world. Oh, that hero of the people, that secretive billionaire Fidel Castro! How could anyone fail to kiss his beard, and declare him the savior of mankind?

Geyer does not have the whole story here: she cannot (given the date of publication) quite cover all of the damage done to Cuba. But in the time of that evil "fascist" Batista, Cuba was an economic marvel: its workers were ranked #8 in the world in terms of wages received, among many other things. Nowadays, Cuba battles it out with Burma for the honors of "most godforsaken country."

And to think: it is still a "fashion item" to wear images of Che Guevara, whose main ability was shooting prisoners -- in prison. Thousands of them! Fidel's Grand Executioner, and we strut around wearing his image, for what reason?

The best biography of this [expletive deleted]. I really hope that Cuba will come back to the real world, and soon!

Here is the true story of Castro, written largely from a foreign policy standpoint. This is not a story of the everyday man in Cuba(although we do learn that he suffered much economically). This is not an economic history of Castro's Cuba(Although we learn how much the economy declined and sugar production as well). This is the story of Castro's foreign flings and the cult of personality around him. We learn of Castro's invasions of a dozen countries in Africa, from Angola to the Congo. We learn equally of Castro's associations with his Latin American compatriots and his attempts to invade and infiltrate most of his neighbors. Those that love Castro and believe he created a socialist paradise in Cuba will not be happy with this book. Equally those wanting to learn the gruesome details of the many suppressed by Castro will also not be happy. This is a fair portrait of this larger then life Guerilla and the wrath he has brought upon the world. This is not a negative book that condemns Castro, in fact I find myself admiring him more after reading it. What one does have to ask themselves if they are an admirer of Castro is if he is truly loved by his people why are their no free elections? Why are other political parties outlawed in Cuba? Why are only government sponsored newspapers allowed? If Castro's socialism was such a paradise then why not let his own people write what they think of it, and say what they think, why murder your political rivals? Or banish them? It is so obvious that communism and all it brings is slavery to its own people, Cuba is a great example and this book tells all about Castro. The author could have done away with the investigation of the Kennedy murder because she reveals nothing new but pollutes many pages with theories.