Bader International Study Centre

Introduction Many of the papers presented at the IDS methodology workshop and in this Bulletin examine the use of quantitative social science methods to generate data and advance our understanding of the situation of Third World women (Crol!, Léal, B. White). As a historian I feel ...

Discusses the historical and contemporary context of the crisis and reforms in the Cuban cigar sector. Author focuses on developments in the period 1992-94 when Cuba sank to, and pulled out of, the depths of the post-1989 crisis. This was when competition from the post-1992 boom of cigars made with Havana seed leaf grown outside Cuba became fierce. She concludes by considering scholarly interpretations of the 1990s agrarian reforms and emphasizes the need to foreground the interplay between external and internal factors.

Review of:An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba. Ruth Behar, photographs by Humberto Mayol. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007. xiii + 297 pp. (Cloth US$ 29.95)Fidel Castro: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography. Fidel Castro & Ignacio Ramonet. New York: Scribner/Simon & Schuster, 2008. vii + 724 pp. (Paper US$ 22.00, e-book US$ 14.99)Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know. Julia E. Sweig. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. xiv + 279 pp. (Paper US$ 16.95)[First paragraph]These three ostensibly very different books tell a compelling story of each author’s approach, as much as the subject matter itself. Fidel Castro: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography is based on a series of long interviews granted by the then-president of Cuba, Fidel Castro, to Spanish-Franco journalist Ignacio Ramonet. Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, by U.S. political analyst Julia Sweig, is one of a set country series, and, like Ramonet’s, presented in question/answer format. An Island Called Hom...