Exclusive Excerpt: Listen, Yankee! Chapter 1: "A Heroic Creation"

Knowing his biography, it is hard to believe that Ricardo was predestined to be a Politburo member of the Cuban Communist Party or, more generally, that Cuba's journey into Marxism-Leninism was inevitable. The island's long battle for real independence from the United States, combined with America's Cold War version of Manifest Destiny, produced those outcomes.