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Selected readings on U.S.-Cuba

 

Current Affairs

2026, Review of The Struggle for the Market: Life and Hustle in Cuba’s New Economy by Stale Wig, reviewed Richard Feinberg. Foreign Affairs, May/June 2026 (April 21, 2026)

 

Wig sides neither with Cuban analysts who have portrayed private enterprise as threatening social solidarity nor with those who describe the market and the state as entirely separate spheres. He finds that the Cuban state and market overlap in a myriad of ways.

 

Unlike conventional wisdom, he interprets the country’s economic reforms of the 2010s not as liberalization but as legalization—as an effort by the state to increase its control over market behavior through a maze of new regulations, inspections, and taxations that stymied economic growth.

 

Wig says most Cubans no longer identify with the 1959 revolution and there is a massive exodus of young Cubans seeking opportunities overseas.

 

Trump is remaking the Americas: The Short-Term Results and the Long-Term Risks of the “Donroe Doctrine” by Brian Winter. Foreign Affairs Winter: July 9, 2026

 

Trumps advisors who are Latin America–focused, most notably Secretary of State Marco Rubio, see Latin America national security as a decades-long struggle against communism. They view the downfall of Maduro in Venezuela, the economic crisis in Cuba, and losses by left-leaning leaders in the region as being close to winning.

 

U.S. military has begun a buildup of assets in the Caribbean that could provide Trump with an array of options, including the capture of Cuban officials. U.S. blockade of oil imports has led to long blackouts and food shortages in Cuba.

 

Chronologies U.S.-Cuba Relations | Council on Foreign Relations https://www.cfr.org/articles/us-cuba-relations

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FIU Institute for Cuban Studies https://ics.fiu.edu/us-cuba-relations/chronology-of-us-cuba-relations/

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History

2026 Cuba: The Capitol of 21st century Communism, report by the U.S. Department of State, July 20, 2026. (State.gov)

 

The 96-page report tracing Cuban networks and spy craft from 1959 concludes with the following statement: “Cuba’s assault on the United States was never, at root, a quarrel over economic policy or sovereignty or even ownership of a particular territory. It was a revolution against Western civilization itself — waged, in part, via the novel and insidious method of persuading the children of the West to turn against their own inheritance.”

 

2022, Cuba: An American History, by Ada Ferrer. (in the library)

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Comprehensive history of Cuba’s relationship with the U.S. across five centuries, from Columbus through the Castro era to modern times.

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Awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History. Ms. Ferrer joined the Princeton University as the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History in July 2024.

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2002, Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground by Julia E. Steig. Harvard University Press.

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Debunks long-standing myth that the Cuban Revolution was won by band of guerrillas and peasants. Compelling revisionist history that reconsiders the roles of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and restores to a central position the leadership of an urban network controlled by middle-class professional who cultivated complex alliance with an array of disparate groups.

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Julia Steig was the only scholar in or outside of Cuba with access to the complete collection in the Cuban Council of State’s Office of Historic Affairs.

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1999, Essence of Decision, Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, by Graham Allison and Philip D. Zelikow, 2nd edition.

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Analysis of the Cuban Missile Crisis examining government decision-making under pressure, incorporating newly declassified Soviet files and Kennedy tapes for fresh insights on government decision-making.

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Allison’s key theoretical models are Rational Actor, Organizational Process, and Bureaucratic Politics.

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The original, widely read version by Graham Allison, published in 1971 (now available on Internet Archive) won the American Political Science Association’s Gladys M. Kammerer Award for U.S. national policy, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award.

 

Historical Fiction -- Cuban culture and political changes

 

1992, Dreaming in Cuba by Cristina Garcia.

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Tracks the lives and politics of three generations of the del Pino family across the mid-century revolution.

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2003, Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confession of a Cuban Boy by Carlos Eire

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Cuban experience under Castro. Winner of National Book Award.

Mr. Eire is the T. L. Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University. He is a historian of late medieval and early modern Europe.

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2021, Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia. (In the library)

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Multi-generational saga following five generations of Cuban women, from 19th-century cigar factories to present-day ICE detention centers, exploring immigration, trauma, addiction, and mother-daughter relationships.