Subject: Caribbean Surveys

1959: The Year That Inflamed the Caribbean
Diederich, Bernard

Subject: Latin America, Caribbean

Certain years are pivotal in global history, and one such year was 1959, from which this book takes its title. 1959 was indeed a historic year during which, among other historic events, Fidel Castro’s guerrilla war in Cuba toppled dictator …

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Black Rebels: African-Caribbean Freedom Fighters in Jamaica
Zips, Werner (preface by Franklin Knight; translated by Shelley Frisch)

Subject: Africa, Caribbean

This book chronicles the struggles of African-Americans who escaped from slavery and developed autonomous, “maroon” societies beyond the fringes of the colonial system, demonstrating the vulnerability of colonial rule and the vitality of black resistance in the Caribbean.

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Caribbean: Sea of the New World
Arciniegas, Germán

Subject: Caribbean

This book is a new edition of the most beautifully written history of the Caribbean from the European discovery through the nineteenth century. Commonweal wrote of the 1946 edition, “Arciniegas has written a most informative and entertaining book…the student of …

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Cuban Music
Roy, Maya (translated by Denise and Gabriel Asfar)

Subject: Caribbean

Native Americans supplied the maracas. African slaves brought drums and ritual music, and Spaniards brought guitars, brass instruments, and clarinets along with European ballroom dancing. The advent of blues and jazz gave new forms to styles of songs, notably feeling …

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Frontiers, Plantations & Walled Cities: Society, Culture & Politics in the Hispanic Caribbean, 1800–1945
Martínez-Fernández, Luis

Subject: Caribbean

For decades, the Hispanic Caribbean has eluded attempts by historians striving to view and analyze Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic as a region rather than as isolated insular units. Focusing on similarities instead of differences and applying comparative …

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History of Puerto Rico: A Panorama of Its People
Picó, Fernando

Subject: Caribbean

Updated and Expanded

Outstanding Academic Book of the Year, CHOICE Magazine

One of Puerto Rico’s leading historians, Fernando Picó has had tremendous influence over our currect understanding of Puerto Rican society. Here, he examines the ways in …

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Nationalist Heroines: Puerto Rican Women History Forgot, 1930s-1950s
Jiménez de Wagenheim, Olga

Subject: Puerto Rican History, US History, Women's History, Caribbean History

From the moment the United States seized Puerto Rico, in 1898, to the 1950s, the islanders employed various forms of resistance to the imposition of American colonial rule. A group of Nationalists led by Pedro Albizu Campos made it clear …

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Puerto Rico: An Interpretive History from Pre-Columbian Times to 1900
de Wagenheim, Olga Jiménez

Subject: Caribbean, Latin America, Puerto Rico

Because many of the documents and books about Puerto Rico have been written by the island’s colonizers, only the victors were celebrated. With this in mind, the author has expressly composed this book from the viewpoint of the colonized, suppressed, …

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Somoza and the Legacy of U.S. Involvement in Central America
Diederich, Bernard

Subject: Caribbean, Latin America, Us History

This engaging story of Nicaragua’s notorious tyrant is more than a biography. Solidly written for a general as well as scholarly audience, it paints a portrait of the man against a backdrop of Nicaragua’s political structure, social circumstance, and economic …

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Space and History in the Caribbean
Lara, Oruno D.

Subject: Caribbean

Oruno D. Lara explains the history of the Caribbean as a history of exploitation.

From Christopher Columbus to the modern vacationer, outside observers have looked upon the Caribbean as a paradise on earth. However, behind the images of sea, …

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