United States in Latin America
Bitter Fruit - Stephen Schlesinger, Stephen Kinzer
Bitter Fruit is a comprehensive and insightful account of the CIA operation to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954. First published in 1982, this book has become a classic, a textbook case of the relationship between the United States and the Third World. The authors make extensive use of U.S. government documents and interviews with former CIA and other officials. It is a warning of what happens when the United States abuses its power.
Cuba: An American History - Ada Ferrer
In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, where a momentous revolution had taken power three years earlier. For more than half a century, the stand-off continued—through the tenure of ten American presidents and the fifty-year rule of Fidel Castro. His death in 2016, and the retirement of his brother and successor Raúl Castro in 2021, have spurred questions about the country’s future. Now, award-winning historian Ada Ferrer delivers an important and moving chronicle that demands a new reckoning with both the island’s past and its relationship with the United States.
2666 - Roberto Bolaño
Santa Teresa, on the Mexico-US border: an urban sprawl that draws lost souls to it like a vortex. Convicts and academics find themselves here, as does an American sportswriter, a teenage student with her widowed father, and a reclusive, 'missing' author. But, there is a darker side to the town. Girls and women are disappearing at an alarming rate. As a sense of conspiracy grows and an apocalyptic shadow draws closer, the corruption, violence and decadence of twentieth-century history reveals itself in a novel of an astonishing scale and burning intensity.
Where There Was Fire - John Manuel Arias
Costa Rica, 1968. A deadly fire rips through the American Fruit Company's most lucrative banana plantation, destroying all evidence of a massive cover-up. That same night, Teresa Cepeda Valverde’s mother is murdered, and her husband vanishes into the darkness. Decades later, as a hurricane twists through the streets of Barrio Ávila, Teresa’s estranged daughter Lyra begins to piece together the mysteries lost in the blaze. In her desire to find the truth of her own family's rupture, she uncovers a web of devastating betrayals, stoked by machismo, jealousy and greed.
Chile 1973: The Other 9/11 - David Francois
Starting with an in-depth study of the Chilean military, paramilitary forces and different leftist movements in particular, this volume traces the history of the build-up and the ultimate clash during the coup of 11 September 1973. Providing minute details about the motivation, organisation and equipment of all involved parties, it also explains why the Chilean military not only launched the coup but also imposed itself in power, and how the leftist movements reacted. This book is a unique study into a well-known yet much under-studied aspect of Latin America’s military history.