Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “Cuba: A History” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

Cuba: A History

Hugh Thomas

3.89 · Rating details · 37 ratings · 2 reviews

From award-winning historian Hugh Thomas, Cuba: A History is the essential work for understanding one of the most fascinating and controversial countries in the world.

Hugh Thomas's acclaimed book explores the whole sweep of Cuban history from the British capture of Havana in 1762 through the years of Spanish and United States domination, down to the twentieth century and ...more

Get A Copy

Paperback, 1152 pages

Published November 25th 2010 by Penguin

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Cuba, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about Cuba

Lists with This Book

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 3.89 ·

Rating details

· 37 ratings · 2 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of Cuba: A History

Oct 30, 2018 Eduardo Garcia-Gaspar rated it really liked it

Shelves: historia

Una historia de Cuba a partir de 1762, el año de la invasión inglesa, hasta después del colapso de la URSS. Fascinante, especialmente los años últimos de Batista y los primeros de Castro. Muy recomendable.

flag Like · see review

Aug 31, 2015 Owain rated it liked it

Shelves: politics

This book is very big. It's also inadequate. I would not recommend this to anyone who wants to gain a general overview of the history of Cuba. It's also biased and spends a lot of time dwelling on the things it's biased against.

The author does a good summary of Cuba's early history and goes into quite a bit of detail about the slave trade. Packing the chapters out with extra info of events that happened outside of Cuba but that still affected important goings on on the island. Like the British This book is very big. It's also inadequate. I would not recommend this to anyone who wants to gain a general overview of the history of Cuba. It's also biased and spends a lot of time dwelling on the things it's biased against.

The author does a good summary of Cuba's early history and goes into quite a bit of detail about the slave trade. Packing the chapters out with extra info of events that happened outside of Cuba but that still affected important goings on on the island. Like the British attitudes to the slave trade over the years. Which helps the reader gain a more in-depth understanding of, not just the slave trade relative to Cuba but to the international slave trade. Which the book is very good at. The book also gives a good portrayal of Cuban-US relations before the revolution particularly with regards to the potential for full Cuban annexation that existed several times pre-revolution.

The book is most interesting, particularly from my point of view in regards to the history of the Communist Party in Cuba, particularly before the 26th July movement. The author gives a detailed view of the party from the earliest relevant moment and this is interesting to learn how the party operated along more orthodox Marxist-Leninist lines than the 26th July movement and Castro and then how these two forces were melded together in the government of Cuba. Trade union activities are given less of a focus. Also what was really fascinating is that the book mentions a Cuban Communist Party delegate heading to Europe (I forget which country) to attend the general assembly of the World Federation of Democratic Youth. I was a delegate to the same assembly (much more recently though!) in Havana.

I felt some of the minor political details of the 1800's and early 1900's could have been left out in favour of a more overarching historical narrative in the vein of 'the political debate gradually shifted towards x which eventually led to y taking place' rather than tedious page after page of relatively insignificant facts that would be more suited to books with a more defined topic than just a general history of Cuba. Although fair play to Thomas for putting the hours in.

What really irritates me is the author's biased against Castro. He must spend at least the latter quarter of the book focusing on this man he obviously doesn't like. The author also uses some very loaded terms to describe Fidel. Comparing Fidel's speeches to Hitler's is not clever. 'Oh! This guy is a very charismatic speaker, so was Hitler!' is a fucking dumb thing to say considering both people's politics are completely different and have led to vastly different things. This is merely the author's cheap way of trying to dismiss someone who's politics he doesn't like with a flippant sentence rather than engaging in an intellectual critique.

Thomas is also very down on some of the immensely positive things Cuba has done. 'What literacy levels taken from like 30% to near 100%? Nah, let's make that seem not important.' His account of the Cuban Missile Crisis is also brief and fleeting which, you would think, would be an important topic to dwell on considering. Weirdly, nothing is mentioned of the Sino-Soviet split which, considering it happened a decade before the book ends, might be considered worth a mention, especially considering it was a deciding factor in Cuba's direction at the time.

Also the book proper ends in 1970 (the author says that by the time the book reaches 1959 he is treading the line between history and journalism). Although the author adds a tiny little epilogue in an attempt to update it. This doesn't make up for the near half-century since the book was first published. Yes things are in flux, the process of history makes that inevitable. But fifty years? This book's perspective is out of date.

TL;DR: book is ok for some of the facts and figures and the earlier portion but basically get something newer (I found Gott's Cuba: A New History better and more concise). ...more

flag Like · see review

Richard rated it really liked it
Mar 16, 2017

Juan Carlos rated it it was amazing
Feb 05, 2018

Florence Cellini rated it really liked it
Aug 22, 2017

Eugene J rated it liked it
Aug 25, 2019

Ebbe rated it it was amazing
Dec 18, 2014

Jack rated it really liked it
Feb 25, 2019

Toby Cox rated it liked it
Sep 28, 2015

Abuelo Federico rated it really liked it
Jan 05, 2020

Bech rated it really liked it
Feb 11, 2018

Elie rated it really liked it
Aug 03, 2015

Casey Lynn rated it liked it
Oct 11, 2018

Alex rated it it was amazing
Jan 12, 2015

David Martin rated it it was amazing
Apr 13, 2010

Mark A. Kinsey rated it liked it
Nov 07, 2018

Mike Cruz rated it liked it
Apr 17, 2018

Michèle Dewulf rated it liked it
May 08, 2018

Rachel Abramowitz rated it liked it
Mar 22, 2016

François Monti rated it it was amazing
May 07, 2014

Sven Gyseghem rated it liked it
Apr 24, 2015

Ella rated it really liked it
Mar 31, 2016

Mark McGinty rated it it was amazing
Jun 20, 2010

Julia rated it liked it
May 01, 2016

William Newton rated it it was amazing
Aug 25, 2014

Shiv Sullivan rated it liked it
Jan 30, 2019

Flowers4Algernon rated it liked it
Feb 23, 2018

Paul Horton rated it really liked it
Sep 30, 2014

Adam Gurri rated it it was amazing
Apr 05, 2019

Bruce Clarke rated it really liked it
Jan 10, 2020

« previous 1 2 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend It | Stats | Recent Status Updates

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

History

7 users

See top shelves…

About Hugh Thomas

Hugh Thomas

81 followers

Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Hugh Swynnerton Thomas, Baron Thomas of Swynnerton, was a British historian and Hispanist.

Thomas was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset before taking a BA in 1953 at Queens' College, Cambridge. He also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. His 1961 book The Spanish Civil War won the Somerset Maugham Award for ...more