Castroism in Crisis

Abstract Since the middle of the twentieth century, Fidel Castro has cast an outsized shadow over all things Cuba, as if the Cuban leader and the communist Caribbean nation were one and the same. Yet, as veteran New York Times correspondent Anthony DePalma contends in his book The Cubans: Ordinary Lives in Extraordinary Times, this reflex obfuscates the complex society that is increasingly at cross purposes with all things Fidel. The author’s keen profiles of ‘ordinary’ citizens give readers an unvarnished entry into the so often unimaginable, surreal or heart-breaking realities at the core of contemporary Cuban life.