Caribbean & West Indies

This audiobook narrated by Tony Chiroldes traces the multifaceted history of Puerto Rico from pre-Columbian times to today.

The untold story of a heroic band of Caribbean pirates whose defiance of imperial rule inspired revolt in colonial outposts across the world....

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN HISTORY “Full of…lively insights and lucid prose” (The Wall Street Journal) an epic, sweeping history of Cuba and its complex ties to the United States—from before the arrival of Columbus to the present...

The powerful, untold story of the 1950 revolution in Puerto Rico and the long history of U.S. intervention on the island, that the New York Times says "could not be more timely." In 1950, after over fifty years of military occupation and colonial rule, the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico staged...

Nearly 30 years after the end of the Cold War, today's leaders are abandoning disarmament treaties, building up their nuclear arsenals, and exchanging threats of nuclear strikes. To survive this new atomic age, we must relearn the lessons of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War....

This powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1794-1803, a revolution that began in the wake of the Bastille but became the model for the Third World liberation movements from Africa to Cuba....

The first and only successful slave revolution in the Americas began in 1791 when thousands of brutally exploited slaves rose up against their masters on Saint-Domingue, the most profitable colony in the 18th-century Atlantic world....

As he explodes many accepted pirate myths (i.e. "walking the plank" is pure fiction), Cordingly replaces them with a truth that is more complex and often bloodier....

A “balanced, engrossing account” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) of the Bay of Pigs crisis drawing on long-hidden CIA documents and delivering the vivid truth of five pivotal days in April 1961. At the heart of the Bay of Pigs crisis stood President John F. Kennedy, and journalist Jim...

He challenged the greatest empire on earth with a ragtag bunch of renegades—and brought it to its knees. Empire of Blue Water is the real story of the pirates of the Caribbean. Henry Morgan, a twenty-year-old Welshman, crossed the Atlantic in 1655, hell-bent on making his fortune. Over the...

A brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua—by the author of Annie John.

In Aid State, Jake Johnston, researcher and writer at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, reveals how US and European capitalist goals re-enslaved Haiti under the guise of helping it....

Monkey Morales blends James Bond, Rambo, and Scarface—a concoction of danger, politics, and family drama told in its entirety for the first time by authors Sean Oliver and Morales's son, Ricardo Morales, Jr.

“[A] magisterial account . . . Gibson constructs a sweeping vision of resistance to slavery as a defining element of Western history that made “abstract concepts of freedom concrete.” Expansive and elegant, this is a marvel.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Among the...

Winner of the 2021 Wolfson History Prize “Black Spartacus is a tour de force: by far the most complete, authoritative and persuasive biography of Toussaint that we are likely to have for a long time... An extraordinarily gripping read.” (David A. Bell, The Guardian) A new interpretation of...

Bestselling author Max Hastings offers a welcome re-evaluation of one of the most gripping and tense international events in modern history—the Cuban Missile Crisis—providing a people-focused narrative that explores the attitudes and conduct of Russians, Cubans, Americans, and a terrified...

And a Bottle of Rum tells the raucously entertaining story of America as seen through the bottom of a drinking glass. With a chapter for each of 10 cocktails....

In Empire’s Crossroads, British American historian Carrie Gibson traces the story of the coveted area from the northern rim of South America up to Cuba....

A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous and cruel, like any other - but with certain differences....

Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in ancient Abyssinia to the advent of Starbucks. In this updated edition of the classic work, Mark Pendergrast reviews the dramatic changes in coffee culture over the past decade....

A crucial, clear-eyed accounting of Puerto Rico's 122 years as a colony of the US. Since its acquisition by the US in 1898, Puerto Rico has served as a testing ground for the most aggressive and exploitative US economic, political, and social policies. The devastation that ensued finally grew...

In late April 1902, Mount Pelee, a volcano on the Caribbean island Martinique, began to wake up. It emitted clouds of ash and smoke for two weeks until violently erupting on May 8....

In the town of San Pedro in the Dominican Republic, baseball is not just a way of life. It's the way of life. By the year 2008, 79 boys and men from San Pedro had gone on to play in the Major Leagues - that means one in six Dominican Republicans who have played in the Majors have come from one...

Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, was the most feared pirate of the Golden Age—a figure who struck terror into the hearts of sailors from the Caribbean to the Carolinas. Most biographies seem to start and stop with that statement, but there was much more to the life of Blackbeard than that.

Fifty years after the Cuban revolution, the legendary wealth of the sugar magnate Julio Lobo remains emblematic of a certain way of life that came to an abrupt end when Fidel Castro marched into Havana. Known in his day as the King of Sugar, Lobo was for decades the most powerful force in the...