John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco's new book,
Cuba, the United States, and the Cultures of the Transnational Left, 1930-1975 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), reaches across the Atlantic ocean and connects journalists, musicians, activists and poets as they moved between Cuba and the United States in the turbulent eras of revolution. Covering 1933 as well as 1959 allows Gronbeck Tedesco to make fresh observations about the intellectual and political climates of those moments as well as to point to important continuities. The ambitions and disillusionment that permeated the novels, plays, poetry and leftist politics frame this book, making it required reading for anyone interested in the fraught and conflictual intimacies between the two nations and those who journeyed back and forth.