"The Cubans" by Anthony DePalma is a comprehensive and engaging exploration of the complex and multifaceted history, culture, and politics of Cuba. In this insightful book, DePalma draws on his decades of experience as a journalist and correspondent to provide readers with a nuanced understanding of the Cuban people and their enduring resilience in the face of adversity.

This non fiction account of various families living in a Havana neighborhood from the years of the revolution to present time reads like a good novel. It is a fascinating, engrossing, in depth narrative. Having spent some time in Cuba, I felt that DePalma
captured the vibrancy, frustration, dashed feeling of possibilities, and character of some of the people I met there. My hope for this book is that it may help some people realize that our most recent treatment of Cuba has not affected the government there, but has had a significant impact on the lives of everyday people. I understand the hatred of Castro and the revolution among those who live here, but cannot understand how they can put embargos in place that hurt people…many of whom have no first hand memory of the revolution. The cruelty is unimaginable.

Fascinating! As journalist Anthony DePalma says, we’ve lived so long with the aftermath of the Cuban revolution, we see Cubans as a stereotype. He’s interviewed many Cubans and focused on a few to show life in Cuba isn’t what many of us assume it is. If you were lucky enough to travel there when Obama lived restrictions, you may find what you saw validated in this book.

The Cubans seeks to tell the story of a group of everyday Cubans, starting from before and during the early years of the Revolution through today. It describes their views on the Castros as well as the everyday challenges and benefits of living in Cuba. I thought that this was an engaging way to tell the history of Cuba under the Castros. I also appreciated that it included people with different perspectives on the Revolution.

Using the Havana suburb of Guanabacoa as the central glue of the narrative, journalist Anthony DePalma takes the reader behind the scenes into a cross-section of lives: a famed artist, a Communist party stalwart and vice minister, young people desperate to make something of their lives, a man who loses 14 relatives in a tragic attempt to escape the island, and many others. The disillusionment, bitterness and weariness of the Cuban people, cowed by decades of fear and poverty imposed on them by stubborn, near-sighted leaders intent on maintaining power at all costs, surge through the pages. These "ordinary" stories expose the revolution's vaunted "successes" in health, education, and equality as little more than shams. The book sadly leaves scant hope that anything will change in Cuba in the foreseeable future, but is testament to the resilience and ingenuity of the Cuban people. Readers will be left feeling that Cubans deserve so much more. A must-read for anyone interested in Latin America.
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