FIDEL CASTRO: A Biography

by John Gerassi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 26, 1973

Gerassi, a former Ramparts editor and enthusiastic Castro supporter, dispenses with the official neutrality usually maintained by YA interpreters, and the resulting biography is infinitely more exciting, concise and clear-cut than anything produced by those authors who feel constrained to withhold their own opinions. It is also likely to be highly controversial in many quarters: less so perhaps for Gerassi's glowing reports of Cuba's progress during the last decade or his scathing commentary on the anti-Castro yellow journalism of the U.S. press and the Bay of Pigs than for his incidental opinions on Puerto Rico (now ""decayed into a complete American colony"") or the Rosenbergs, who are pronounced innocent in a seven line footnote. The creative use of Castro's own speeches, revealing anecdotes -- like Sartre's impressions of Castro's spartan, barracks-like home, and New York Times correspondent Herbert Mathews' recollections of how Castro fooled him into believing that his eighteen armed supporters represented a much larger guerrilla army -- show Castro himself first hand; balance these against such one-sided views as Gerassi's vitriolic attack on jailed poet Herbert Padillo (whose imprisonment he defends in terms of ending the special privileges of intellectuals) and his ringing prediction of the inevitability of world revolution in the coming decades (Chile, one example, already makes his timetable less convincing). A battling, sometimes intemperate brief for Castroite policies and Latin American (as opposed to Soviet) communism, this may pose a problem for librarians; however Gerassi does present the radical rebuttal to the most familiar anti-communist arguments and thoughtful young people ought to be able to compare for themselves.

Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION