José Martí: A Revolutionary Life

By: Alfred J. López

Narrated by: Kevin Moriarty

José Martí (1853–1895) was the founding hero of Cuban independence. In all of modern Latin American history, arguably only the “Great Liberator” Simón Bolívar rivals Martí in stature and legacy. Today he is revered by both the Castro regime and the Cuban exile community, whose shared veneration of the “apostle” of freedom has led to his virtual apotheosis as a national saint.

In José Martí: A Revolutionary Life, Alfred J. López presents the definitive biography of the Cuban patriot and martyr. Writing from a nonpartisan perspective and drawing on years of research using original Cuban and US sources, including materials never before used in a Martí biography, López strips away generations of mythmaking and portrays Martí as Cuba’s greatest founding father and one of Latin America’s literary and political giants, without suppressing his public missteps and personal flaws. In a lively account that engrosses like a novel, López traces the full arc of Martí’s eventful life, from his childhood and adolescence in Cuba, to his first exile and subsequent life in Spain, Mexico City, and Guatemala, through his mature revolutionary period in New York City and much-mythologized death in Cuba on the battlefield at Dos Ríos. The first major biography of Martí in over half a century and the first ever in English, José Martí is the most substantial examination of Martí’s life and work ever published.

The book is published by University of Texas Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

"This is the one and only book that treats the nineteenth-century Cuban figure José Martí as a human instead of an idol...." (Tom Miller, author of Trading with the Enemy)

"Thorough, compelling and a generally lively account...." (The Washington Post)

©2014 Alfred J. López (P)2023 Redwood Audiobooks

Balanced biography

This book promises to present an objective approach to José Martí’s biography and it delivers. Being a book about a Cuban writer, set mainly in the Hispanic world, one would have expected that the person reading the text for the audio version would familiarize himself with the pronunciation of Hispanic names for places, institutions, and people. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Would it have been so difficult to find a Hispanic/Latino performer?