Random House New Releases - History - Central America

INSIDE CENTRAL AMERICA by Phillip Berryman

2013-02-20T00:30:00-05:00

INSIDE CENTRAL AMERICA The Essential Facts Past and Present on El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Costa Rica
Written by Phillip Berryman

eBook, 176 pages | Pantheon | History - Central America; Political Science - International Relations; Political Science - World - Caribbean & Latin American | $15.99 | 978-0-307-83163-7 (0-307-83163-9)

Since 1979, United States policy in Central America has been based on an assumption that revolutionary movements led by Marxists must represent a serious threat to U.S. interests and security. On this point, the difference between liberals and conservatives is merely one of emphasis or accent.

Such an assumption is not shared by most governments in Western Europe and Latin America. In part, these countries base their positions on their understanding of the originas of the present crisis—that is, the history, both remote and recent, of Central America.
(Original publication 6/85)

Sin Fidel by Ann Louise Bardach

2012-09-25T00:30:00-05:00

Sin Fidel Los ultimos anos de Fidel Castro, sus enemigos y el futuro de Cuba
Written by Ann Louise Bardach

Trade Paperback, 496 pages | Vintage | Political Science - International Relations; History - Central America; Political Science - Communism & Socialism | $15.95 | 978-0-307-94775-8 (0-307-94775-0)

Un esclarecedor relato del último capítulo de la vida de Fidel Castro: su cercano encuentro con la muerte en 2006, sus enemigos y la planeada sucesión de su hermano Raúl.

Desde 1959, Fidel Castro ha presidido uno de los más controversiales y combativos gobiernos del mundo, enfrentando a los Estados Unidos y afincado en el centro de una cultura divida entre dos ciudades: Miami y La Habana. A partir de casi dos décadas de periodismo en profundidad y de incontables entrevistas con los protagonistas, Ann Louise Bardach ofrece en este fascinante libro una crónica deslumbrante sobre la confrontación política entre los Estados Unidos y Cuba, donde figuran tanto los hermanos Castro y otros miembros de la familia, como cubanos corrientes y oficiales y políticos en Miami, La Habana y Washington. El resultado es un doble retrato inolvidable del clima político de la isla más importante del Caribe: una investigación clave sobre su presente y su futuro tras medio siglo de dictadura, división y conflicto.

Uno de los mejores libros del año de The Miami Herald

The Battle of Venezuela by Michael McCaughan

2011-01-04T00:30:00-05:00

The Battle of Venezuela
Written by Michael McCaughan

eBook | Seven Stories Press | History - Central America; Political Science - International Relations - Diplomacy; Political Science - Foreign Legal Systems | $12.95 | 978-1-60980-116-8 (1-60980-116-4)

In August 2004, the Venezuelan public came out in record numbers to deliver an overwhelming vote of confidence. After many attempts to unseat him, Hugo Chåvez, the former military man who took the country first by coup and then by ballot, again emerged as the people’s choice. It was, in his words, "a victory for the people of Venezuela."
Yet despite Chåvez’s successes, having defended his post in six referenda, two elections and against one failed coup, Venezuela—one of the world’s largest oil exporting countries—is a nation deeply divided. The power struggle between the country’s first indigenous head of state and his detractors expresses a larger conflict gripping the region.
In The Battle of Venezuela, Guardian reporter Michael McCaughan captures the drama of challenges to Chåvez’s presidency in the courts and on the streets of Caracas. In this detailed analysis of the political forces at work, McCaughan documents the role of the country’s powerful and shrinking middle class, the effects of Chåvez’s social programs for his mainly poor constituents, and the rise of the social movement whose members proclaim themselves "Chåvistas."

Colombia and the United States by Mario A. Murillo

2011-01-04T00:30:00-05:00

Colombia and the United States War, Unrest and Destabilization
Written by Mario A. Murillo

eBook | Seven Stories Press | History - Central America; Political Science - International Relations - Diplomacy; Political Science - Foreign Legal Systems | $10.95 | 978-1-60980-197-7 (1-60980-197-0)

Every year the United States spends millions of dollars to help the war-ravaged country of Colombia. But help it with what? In Colombia and the U.S. Mario Murillo explores the misdirected and devastating impact that U.S. military "aid" continues to have on the war torn-people of Colombia. Beginning with a brief history of Colombia, Murillo analyzes the complex forces driving Colombia's current decades-old guerilla war, U.S. involvement, media perceptions, and possible paths to peace. Whether it has been the U.S.-led war against "drug trafficking," the newly constituted "war against terrorism," or, as we have seen over the last two years, a convenient marriage of the two, the main effect has been to allow the U.S. to further expand its role in Colombia. The foundations of Colombia's social, political, and military conflict are rarely addressed by U.S. policy. Murillo describes Colombia's history of institutionalized corruption, state neglect, far-reaching poverty, and political violence and how they precede by decades the introduction and expansion of the drug trade.
Colombia and the U.S. argues that the conflict in Colombia is not about drugs, nor guerrillas, nor "terrorism," but rather about the unwillingness of the country's elite to open up spaces for truly democratic participation in areas of economic and social development and political representation.

Looking for History by Alma Guillermoprieto

2007-12-18T00:30:00-05:00

Looking for History Dispatches from Latin America
Written by Alma Guillermoprieto

eBook, 320 pages | Vintage | History - Central America | $13.99 | 978-0-307-42667-3 (0-307-42667-X)

From the esteemed New Yorker correspondent comes an incisive volume of essays and reportage that vividly illuminates Latin America’s recent history. Only Alma Guillermoprieto, the most highly regarded writer on the region, could unravel the complex threads of Colombia’s cocaine wars or assess the combination of despotism, charm, and political jiu-jitsu that has kept Fidel Castro in power for more than 40 years. And no one else can write with such acumen and sympathy about statesmen and campesinos, leftist revolutionaries and right-wing militias, and political figures from Evita Peron to Mexico’s irrepressible president, Vicente Fox.

Whether she is following the historic papal visit to Havana or staying awake for a pre-dawn interview with an insomniac Subcomandante Marcos, Guillermoprieto displays both the passion and knowledge of an insider and the perspective of a seasoned analyst. Looking for History is journalism in the finest traditions of Joan Didion, V. S. Naipaul, and Ryszard Kapucinski: observant, empathetic, and beautifully written.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Stealing Benefacio's Roses by Martin Prechtel

2006-06-07T00:30:00-05:00

Stealing Benefacio's Roses A Mayan Epic
Written by Martin Prechtel

Trade Paperback, 392 pages | North Atlantic Books | History - Central America | $18.95 | 978-1-55643-587-4 (1-55643-587-8)

Following the acclaimed Secrets of The Talking Jaguar and Long Life, Honey in the Heart, this is an expansive, lyrical novel in the tradition of indigenous oral storytelling. Based on the author's many years of living in a Guatemalan village, Stealing Benefacio's Roses interweaves dramatic recountings of village life and the political horrors of civil war with lyric retellings of sacred Mayan myths. The story shifts expertly from timeless, with archetypal characters like Raggedy Boy and the goddess known as the Water-Skirted Beauty, to timely in the book's striking first-person narrative set in the 1980s. Prechtel shows how ancient myths can become a part of life for everyone and help nurture spiritual survival in the modern world. Though it comes third in sequence with the author's other two books, Stealing Benefacio's Roses also stands on its own as a classic work of spiritual seeking and adventure.

The Battle of Venezuela by Michael McCaughan

2005-06-07T00:30:00-05:00

The Battle of Venezuela
Written by Michael McCaughan

Trade Paperback, 240 pages | Seven Stories Press | History - Central America; Political Science - International Relations - Diplomacy; Political Science - Foreign Legal Systems | $12.95 | 978-1-58322-680-3 (1-58322-680-X)

The Darkest Jungle by Ray Childs

2003-12-30T00:30:00-05:00

The Darkest Jungle The True Story of the Darien Expedition and America's Ill-Fated Race to Connect the Seas
Written by Todd Balf
Read by Ray Childs

Abridged Audiobook Download | Random House Audio | History - Central America | $14.95 | 978-0-7393-0353-5 (0-7393-0353-8)

“Commit yourself to the Virgin Mary, for in her hands is the way into the Darién—and in God’s is the way out.”

The Darkest Jungle tells the harrowing story of America’s first ship canal exploration across a narrow piece of land in Central America called the Darién, a place that loomed large in the minds of the world’s most courageous adventurers in the nineteenth century. With rival warships and explorers from England and France days behind, the 27-member U.S. Darién Exploring Expedition landed on the Atlantic shore at Caledonia Bay in eastern Panama to begin their mad dash up the coast-hugging mountains of the Darién wilderness. The whole world watched as this party attempted to be the first to traverse the 40-mile isthmus, the narrowest spot between the Atlantic and Pacific in all the Americas.

Later, government investigators would say they were doomed before they started. Amid the speculative fever for an Atlantic and Pacific ship canal, the terrain to be crossed had been grossly misrepresented and fictitiously mapped. By January 27, 1854, the Americans had served out their last provisions and were severely footsore but believed the river they had arrived at was an artery to the Pacific, their destination. Leading them was the charismatic commander Isaac Strain, an adventuring 33-year-old U.S. Navy lieutenant. The party could have turned back except, said Strain, they were to a man “revolted at the idea” of failing at a task they seemed destined to accomplish. Like the first men to try to scale Everest or reach the North Pole, they felt the eyes of their countrymen upon them.

Yet Strain’s party would wander lost in the jungle for another sixty nightmarish days, following a tortuously contorted and uncharted tropical river. Their guns rusted in the damp heat, expected settlements never materialized, and the lush terrain provided little to no sustenance. As the unending march dragged on, the party was beset by flesh-embedding parasites and a range of infectious tropical diseases they had no antidote for (or understanding of). In the desperate final days, in the throes of starvation, the survivors flirted with cannibalism and the sickest men had to be left behind so, as the journal keeper painfully recorded, the rest might have a chance to live.

The U.S. Darién Exploring Expedition’s 97-day ordeal of starvation, exhaustion, and madness—a tragedy turned “triumph of the soul” due to the courage and self-sacrifice of their leader and the seamen who devotedly followed him—is one of the great untold tales of human survival and exploration. Based on the vividly detailed log entries of Strain and his junior officers, other period sources, and Balf’s own treks in the Darién Gap, this is a rich and utterly compelling historical narrative that will thrill readers who enjoyed In the Heart of the Sea, Isaac’s Storm, and other sagas of adventure at the limits of human endurance.

From the Hardcover edition.

The Darkest Jungle by Scott Brick

2003-09-03T00:30:00-05:00

The Darkest Jungle The True Story of the Darien Expedition and America's Ill-Fated Race to Connect the Seas
Written by Todd Balf
Read by Scott Brick

Unabridged Audiobook Download | Random House Audio | History - Central America | $17.95 | 978-1-4159-0132-8 (1-4159-0132-5)

Colombia and the United States by Mario A. Murillo

2003-09-02T00:30:00-05:00

Colombia and the United States War, Unrest and Destabilization
Written by Mario A. Murillo

Trade Paperback, 232 pages | Seven Stories Press | History - Central America; Political Science - International Relations - Diplomacy; Political Science - Foreign Legal Systems | $10.95 | 978-1-58322-606-3 (1-58322-606-0)

Looking for History by Alma Guillermoprieto

2002-03-12T00:30:00-05:00

Looking for History Dispatches from Latin America
Written by Alma Guillermoprieto

Trade Paperback, 320 pages | Vintage | History - Central America | $16.95 | 978-0-375-72582-1 (0-375-72582-2)

The Massacre at El Mozote by Mark Danner

1994-04-05T00:30:00-05:00

The Massacre at El Mozote
Written by Mark Danner

Trade Paperback, 320 pages | Vintage | History - Central America | $15.95 | 978-0-679-75525-8 (0-679-75525-X)

In December 1981 soldiers of the Salvadoran Army's select, American-trained Atlacatl Battalion entered the village of El Mozote, where they murdered hundreds of men, women, and children, often by decapitation. Although reports of the massacre -- and photographs of its victims -- appeared in the United States, the Reagan administration quickly dismissed them as propaganda. In the end, El Mozote was forgotten. The war in El Salvador continued, with American funding.

When Mark Danner's reconstruction of these events first appeared in The New Yorker, it sent shock waves through the news media and the American foreign-policy establishment. Now Danner has expanded his report into a brilliant book, adding new material as well as the actual sources. He has produced a masterpiece of scrupulous investigative journalism that is also a testament to the forgotten victims of a neglected theater of the cold war.

Random House New Releases - History - Central America

INSIDE CENTRAL AMERICA by Phillip Berryman

INSIDE CENTRAL AMERICA The Essential Facts Past and Present on El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Costa RicaWritten by Phillip Berryman

Sin Fidel by Ann Louise Bardach

Sin Fidel Los ultimos anos de Fidel Castro, sus enemigos y el futuro de CubaWritten by Ann Louise Bardach

The Battle of Venezuela by Michael McCaughan

The Battle of Venezuela Written by Michael McCaughan

Colombia and the United States by Mario A. Murillo

Colombia and the United States War, Unrest and DestabilizationWritten by Mario A. Murillo

Looking for History by Alma Guillermoprieto

Looking for History Dispatches from Latin AmericaWritten by Alma Guillermoprieto

Stealing Benefacio's Roses by Martin Prechtel

Stealing Benefacio's Roses A Mayan EpicWritten by Martin Prechtel

The Battle of Venezuela by Michael McCaughan

The Battle of Venezuela Written by Michael McCaughan

The Darkest Jungle by Ray Childs

The Darkest Jungle The True Story of the Darien Expedition and America's Ill-Fated Race to Connect the SeasWritten by Todd Balf Read by Ray Childs

The Darkest Jungle by Scott Brick

The Darkest Jungle The True Story of the Darien Expedition and America's Ill-Fated Race to Connect the SeasWritten by Todd Balf Read by Scott Brick

Colombia and the United States by Mario A. Murillo

Colombia and the United States War, Unrest and DestabilizationWritten by Mario A. Murillo

Looking for History by Alma Guillermoprieto

Looking for History Dispatches from Latin AmericaWritten by Alma Guillermoprieto

The Massacre at El Mozote by Mark Danner

The Massacre at El Mozote Written by Mark Danner

INSIDE CENTRAL AMERICA The Essential Facts Past and Present on El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Costa Rica
Written by Phillip Berryman

Sin Fidel Los ultimos anos de Fidel Castro, sus enemigos y el futuro de Cuba
Written by Ann Louise Bardach

The Battle of Venezuela
Written by Michael McCaughan

Colombia and the United States War, Unrest and Destabilization
Written by Mario A. Murillo

Looking for History Dispatches from Latin America
Written by Alma Guillermoprieto

Stealing Benefacio's Roses A Mayan Epic
Written by Martin Prechtel

The Battle of Venezuela
Written by Michael McCaughan

The Darkest Jungle The True Story of the Darien Expedition and America's Ill-Fated Race to Connect the Seas
Written by Todd Balf
Read by Ray Childs

The Darkest Jungle The True Story of the Darien Expedition and America's Ill-Fated Race to Connect the Seas
Written by Todd Balf
Read by Scott Brick

Colombia and the United States War, Unrest and Destabilization
Written by Mario A. Murillo

Looking for History Dispatches from Latin America
Written by Alma Guillermoprieto

The Massacre at El Mozote
Written by Mark Danner