History : Caribbean & West Indies

A comprehensive synthesis of Caribbean prehistory from 4000 BC to AD 1700. more...

Price: $23.00

The recent retirement of Fidel Castro turned the world’s attention towards the island nation of Cuba and the question of what its future holds. Amid the talk and hypothesizing, it is worth taking a moment to consider how Cuba reached this point. Antoni Kapcia provides this with his incisive history of Cuba since 1959. Kapcia’s history takes the Cuban Revolution as its starting point, analysing the process of social revolution, its benefits and disadvantages, popular participation in the revolution and the development of its ideology. Kapcia probes Castro’s rapid rise to national leader, exploring his politics of defence and dissent as well as his contentious relationship with the USA from the beginning of his reign. The book also considers the evolution of the revolution’s international profile and Cuba’s foreign relations over the years, investigating issues and events such as the Bay of Pigs crisis, Cuban relations with Communist nations like Russia and China, and the flight of asylum-seeking Cubans to Florida over the decades. The collapse of the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 catalysed a severe economic and political crisis in Cuba, but Cuba was surprisingly resilient in the face of the catastrophe, Kapcia notes, and he examines the strategies adopted by Cuba over the last two decades in order to survive America’s longstanding trade embargo. A fascinating and much-needed examination of a country that has served as an important political symbol and diplomatic enigma for the twentieth century, Cuba in Revolution is a critical primer for all those interested in Cuba’s past – or concerned with its future. more...

Price: $28.95

How are recent minority immigrant groups faring in the political adjustment to the United States? Is racism still a serious obstacle to their political inclusion? This book details and explores the political experiences of Afro-Caribbean immigrants in New York City to answer these questions. more...

Price: $22.00

Native American cultures of Puerto Rico prior to the arrival of the Spanish in 1493.A book on the prehistory of a modern geopolitical entity is artificial. It is unlikely that prehistoric occupants recognized the same boundaries and responded to the same political forces that operated in the formation of current nations, states, or cities. Yet, archaeologists traditionally have produced such volumes and they generally represent anchors for ongoing research in a specific region, in this case the island of Puerto Rico, its immediate neighbors, and the wider Caribbean basin. To varying degrees, this work addresses issues and draws data from beyond the boundaries of Puerto Rico because in prehistoric times the water between islands likely was not viewed as a boundary in our modern sense of the term. The last few decades have witnessed a growth of intense archaeological research on the island, from material culture in the form of lithics, ceramics, and rock art; to nutritional, architecture, and environmental studies; to rituals and social patterns; to the aftermath of Conquest. Ancient Borinquen provides a comprehensive overview of recent thinking, new data, syntheses, and insights into current Puerto Rican archaeology, and it reflects and illuminates similar concerns elsewhere in the West Indies, lowland South America, and Central America. Peter E. Siegel is a Principal Archaeologist and Senior Project Manager with John Milner Associates, a cultural heritage management firm specializing in archaeology, architecture, and planning.With Contributions By: Karen F. Anderson-Córdova, Susan D. deFrance, John G. Jones, Lee A. Newsom, José R. Oliver, Deborah M. Pearsall, Reniel Rodríguez Ramos, Peter G. Roe, Peter E. Siegel, Anne V. Stokes, Joshua M. Torres, Daniel P. Wagner, Jeff Walker more...

Price: $29.56

The story of how a criminal Shangri-La almost happened. In 1981, a small but heavily armed force of misfits from the United States and Canada set off on an unlikely mission: to invade the impoverished Caribbean island of Dominica, overthrow its government in a coup d'etat, and install a new bought-off prime minister. For two years, the gangleaders recruited manpower, wooed investors, forged links with the mob, stockpiled weapons, and planned their assault. They called it Operation Red Dog. They were going to make millions. All that stood in their way were two federal agents from Louisiana on the biggest case of their lives. Bayou of Pigs tells a remarkable story of foreign military intervention, revolutionary politics, greed, treachery, stupidity, deceit, and one of the most outlandish crimes ever attempted: the theft of a nation. Stewart Bell (Toronto, ON) is the author of Cold Terror (978-0-470-84056-6). more...

Price: $24.95