All posts by Emily Berg

Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered – Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

The highly anticipated first book by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, the voices behind the #1 hit podcast My Favorite Murder!

Sharing never-before-heard stories ranging from their struggles with depression, eating disorders, and addiction, Karen and Georgia irreverently recount their biggest mistakes and deepest fears, reflecting on the formative life events that shaped them into two of the most followed voices in the nation.

In Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered, Karen and Georgia focus on the importance of self-advocating and valuing personal safety over being ‘nice’ or ‘helpful.’ They delve into their own pasts, true crime stories, and beyond to discuss meaningful cultural and societal issues with fierce empathy and unapologetic frankness.

My Favorite Murder started as a way for Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark to work through their fears. Now it’s a worldwide community…. Even its darkest moments are lightened by Karen and Georgia’s effortlessly funny banter and genuine empathy.” —RollingStone.com

About the Author


Known for her biting wit and musical prowess, Karen Kilgariff has been a staple in the comedy world for decades. As a performer, she has appeared on Mr. Show, The Book Group, and Conan. She then transitioned to scripted television, writing for shows like Other Space, Portlandia, and Baskets. Her musical comedy album Live at the Bootleg was included in Vulture’s Best Standup Specials and Albums of 2014.

Georgia Hardstark has enjoyed a successful career as a food writer and Cooking Channel on-camera personality, which began with the invention of the farcical cocktail, The McNuggetini. She went on to co-host a travel/adventure/party show called Tripping Out with Alie & Georgia, and a regular gig on Cooking Channel’s #1 show, Unique Sweets. She capped that off as a repeat guest narrator on Comedy Central’s hit show Drunk History.

Praise For…


Praise for Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered:
“All the best advice your mother never told you.” —Jenny Lawson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Furiously Happy

“Kilgariff and Hardstark bring a much needed dimension to our current, true crime fever dream—an empathetic, slangy dose of acidic humor, weary compassion, and nervous hope. Their podcast is a joy to listen to and this book captures its energy and hilarity perfectly.” —Patton Oswalt, New York Times bestselling author of Silver Screen Fiend

“In addition to being laugh-out-loud funny, smart, and incisive, Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered is so interesting and insightful that it made me a) want to be best friends with the authors and b) for real ask them to take me on as a therapy patient. This book is hilarious, honest, insightful, and clever as hell. Do yourself a fun favor by buying it and consuming it. You’ll emerge at the final word as a new-and-improved badass version of your former self.” —Megan Mullally, New York Times bestselling co-author of The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

“It’s like an afternoon coffee date with your best friend that spills late into the night—where you share your darkest secrets and hardest-earned advice, and then emerge back into the world fully recharged. And ready to destroy toxic masculinity. Karen and Georgia are the voice of a movement—badass and vulnerable as hell—and this is their manifesto.” —Stephanie Perkins, New York Times bestselling author of There’s Someone Inside Your House

Praise for My Favorite Murder:
“Wildly popular…. In many ways, the subversive charm of [My Favorite Murder] is today’s answer to riot grrrl, the D.I.Y. feminist punk movement of the 1990s.” —The New York Times

“[My Favorite Murder] empowers listeners by offering practical advice for survival and self-care and by using comedy to deflate the scariness of these topics.” —TheAtlantic.com

“Morbid [and] mirthful.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Truly next-level…. hilarious, brutally honest, and totally addicting.” —Nylon.com

“Wildly entertaining.” —Refinery29

“One of the most successful podcasts in history.” —TheWashingtonPost.com

Ask Again, Yes – Mary Beth Keane

“A beautiful novel, bursting at the seams with empathy.” —Elle

A profoundly moving novel about two neighboring families in a suburban town, the friendship between their children, a tragedy that reverberates over four decades, the daily intimacies of marriage, and the power of forgiveness.

How much can a family forgive? 

Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, rookie cops in the NYPD, live next door to each other outside the city. What happens behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne, sets the stage for the explosive events to come.

Ask Again, Yes is a deeply affecting exploration of the lifelong friendship and love that blossoms between Kate Gleeson and Peter Stanhope, born six months apart. One shocking night their loyalties are divided, and their bond will be tested again and again over the next 40 years. Luminous, heartbreaking, and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes reveals the way childhood memories change when viewed from the distance of adulthood—villains lose their menace and those who appeared innocent seem less so. Kate and Peter’s love story, while haunted by echoes from the past, is marked by tenderness, generosity, and grace.

About the Author


Mary Beth Keane attended Barnard College and the University of Virginia, where she received an MFA. She has been named one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35,” and was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for fiction writing. She currently lives in Pearl River, New York with her husband and their two sons. She is also the author of The Walking People, Fever, and Ask AgainYes.

Praise For…


“A beautiful novel, bursting at the seams with empathy.”
Brianna Kovan, Elle

“A profound story… Keane’s gracefully restrained prose gives her characters dignity… shows how difficult forgiveness can be—and how it amounts to a kind of hard-won grace.” —Vogue

“Mary Beth Keane takes on one of the most difficult problems in fiction—how to write about human decency. In Ask Again, Yes, Keane creates a layered emotional truth that makes a compelling case for compassion over blame, understanding over grudge, and the resilience of hearts that can accept the contradictions of love.”
— Louise Erdrich, author of The Round House

“Ask Again, Yes is a powerful and moving novel of family, trauma, and the defining moments in people’s lives. Mary Beth Keane is a writer of extraordinary depth, feeling and wit. Readers will love this book, as I did.”
—Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion

“I devoured this astonishing tale of two families linked by chance, love, and tragedy. Mary Beth Keane gives us characters so complex and alive that I find myself still thinking of them days after turning the final page. A must-read.”
—J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Saints for All Occasions

“Remarkable.”
Booklist

“Mary Beth Keane looks past the veneer that covers ordinary moments and into the very heart of real life. There’s a Tolstoyan gravity, insight, and moral heft in these pages, and Keane’s ability to plumb the depths of authentic feeling while avoiding sentimentality leaves one shaking one’s head in frank admiration. This wonderful book is so many things: a gripping family drama; a sensitive meditation on mental illness; a referendum on the power and cost of loyalty; a ripping yarn that takes us down into the depths and back up; in short, a triumph.”
Matthew Thomas, author of We Are Not Ourselves

“Keane’s story embraces family lives in all their muted, ordinary, yet seismic shades… offers empathy and the long view… Tender and patient, the novel avoids excessive sweetness while planting itself deep in the soil of commitment and attachment. Graceful and mature. A solidly satisfying, immersive read.”
Kirkus (starred review) 

“Thoughtful, compassionate… illustrates the mutability of memory and the softening effects of time… poignantly demonstrates how grace can emerge from forgiveness.”
Publishers Weekly

“Mary Beth Keane is at the height of her powers in this novel about the sacrifices we make when we choose to build a life with someone. In Ask Again Yes, Keane tells a story about the fragility of happiness, the violence lurking beneath everyday life, and, ultimately, the power of love. If you’ve ever loved someone beyond reason, you will love this wise, tender, and beautiful book.”
Eleanor Henderson, author of Ten Thousand Saints

“Mary Beth Keane combines Joan Didion’s exacting eye for detail with the emotional wallop of Alice McDermott. From the ache of first love to the recognition that the people closest to us are flawed and human, Ask Again, Yes is a moving testament to the necessary act of forgiveness. It is heartbreaking, hopeful, and honest.”
—Brendan Mathews, author of The World of Tomorrow

“Beautifully observed. . . . Ask Again, Yes is a tale that will compel readers to think deeply about the ravages of unacknowledged mental illness, questions of family love and loyalty, and the arduous journey towards forgiveness.” —BookPage, starred review

Ernesto – Andrew Feldman

From the first North American scholar permitted to study in residence at Hemingway’s beloved Cuban home comes a radically new understanding of “Papa’s” life in Cuba

Ernest Hemingway first landed in Cuba in 1928. In some ways he never left. After a decade of visiting regularly, he settled near Cojímar—a tiny fishing village east of Havana—and came to think of himself as Cuban. His daily life among the common people there taught him surprising lessons, and inspired the novel that would rescue his declining career. That book, The Old Man and the Sea, won him a Pulitzer and, one year later, a Nobel Prize. In a rare gesture of humility, Hemingway announced to the press that he accepted the coveted Nobel “as a citizen of Cojímar.”

In Ernesto, Andrew Feldman uses his unprecedented access to newly available archives to tell the full story of Hemingway’s self-professed Cuban-ness: his respect for Cojímar fishermen, his long-running affair with a Cuban lover, the warmth of his adoptive Cuban family, the strong influences on his work by Cuban writers, his connections to Cuban political figures and celebrities, his denunciation of American imperial ambitions, and his enthusiastic role in the revolution.

With a focus on the island’s violent political upheavals and tensions that pulled Hemingway between his birthplace and his adopted country, Feldman offers a new angle on our most influential literary figure. Far from being a post-success, pre-suicide exile, Hemingway’s decades in Cuba were the richest and most dramatic of his life, and a surprising instance in which the famous American bully sought redemption through his loyalty to the underdog.

About the Author


Andrew Feldman spent two years conducting research in residence at the Hemingway Museum and Library in Havana, Cuba. He has taught at Tulane University, Dillard University, and the University of Maryland. He lives with his wife in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Praise For…


“[An] original portrait of the author’s life and work…Feldman’s eloquent, evenhanded biography is… A fresh and fair assessment of Hemingway’s life and work that refreshingly avoids slipping into hagiography.”—STARRED KIRKUS REVIEW

“This ‘untold story’ offers new takes on Hemingway’s literary friendships, extramarital affairs, and mixed feelings about Castro’s revolution. As Cuba and Hemingway continue their mystical and divisive holds on the American consciousness, Feldman’s book provides useful background.”—BOOKLIST

“For a work that covers as much historical ground as Ernesto does, Feldman’s narrative is taut and dramatic.  He presents a lot of new and fascinating material about Hemingway’s life in Cuba, engagingly played off against a lucid and thorough history of Cuba in the last century.  A great read.” —Mary V. Dearborn, author of Ernest Hemingway: A Biography 

“For a long time in Hemingway studies, the final and declining two decades of an over-chronicled life were largely misunderstood. Andrew Feldman’s readable Ernesto helps to extend our knowledge of Hemingway’s complex relationship with his adopted second homeland of Cuba.”
—Paul Hendrickson, author of Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost

Ernesto is among the most important Hemingway titles to appear in recent years. Comprehensive, nuanced, and full of timely new perspectives, what sets this book apart is the author’s attuned and sensible approach to complex political and cultural affairs. Ernesto enriches our understanding of Hemingway in Cuba with perceptive insights on topics that rarely appear in criticism.”—Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera, In Paris Or Paname: Hemingway’s Expatriate Nationalism

“So much has been written about Ernest Hemingway, but this book is outstandingly different. Unlike any other I know, it expresses an understanding of the context: the Cuba Hemingway visited, lived in, and loved. It will be a reference point for any researcher who wants a better understanding of the work of this iconic author, and anyone trying to penetrate the varied, fascinating, and controversial life of the Bronze God of North American literature. This is a book that is worth reading.”—Ada Rosa Rosales, Director, Museo Hemingway Finca Vigia (Cuba)

The Learning Curve – Mandy Berman

How are young women supposed to see each other clearly when they can’t even see themselves? This razor-sharp novel “perfectly captures [the] power dynamics and identity issues that . . . women are forced to face.”—Marie Claire (Must-Read Books of 2019)

Fiona and Liv are seniors at Buchanan College, a small liberal arts school in rural Pennsylvania. Fiona, who is still struggling emotionally after the death of her younger sister, is spending her final college year sleeping with abrasive men she meets in bars. Liv is happily coupled and on the fast track to marriage with an all-American frat boy. Both of their journeys, and their friendship, will be derailed by the relationships they develop with Oliver Ash, a ruggedly good-looking visiting literature professor whose first novel was published to great success when he was twenty-six.

But now Oliver is in his early forties, with thinning hair and a checkered past, including talk of a relationship with an underage woman—a former student—at a previous teaching job. Meanwhile, Oliver’s wife, Simone, is pursuing an academic research project in Berlin, raising their five-year-old son, dealing with her husband’s absence, and wondering if their marriage is beyond repair.

This sly, stunning, wise-beyond-its-years novel is told from the perspectives of the three women and showcases Mandy Berman’s talent for exploring the complexities of desire, friendship, identity, and power dynamics in the contemporary moment.

Advance praise for The Learning Curve

“[A] smart, engaging coming-of-age story . . . [Mandy] Berman delivers a thorough and incredibly timely investigation into relationship power imbalances that’s sure to start a lot of conversations.”Publishers Weekly

“Berman’s spot-on dialogue keeps the pages turning . . . timely . . . should find a large readership.”Booklist

A Good Enough Mother – Bev Thomas

Ruth Hartland is a psychotherapist with years of experience. But professional skill is no guard against private grief. The mother of grown twins, she is haunted by the fact that her beautiful, difficult, fragile son Tom, a boy who never “fit in,” disappeared a year and a half earlier. She cannot give up hope of finding him, but feels she is living a kind of half-life, waiting for him to return.

Enter a new patient, Dan–unstable and traumatized–who looks exactly like her missing son. She is determined to help him, but soon, her own complicated feelings, about how she has failed her own boy, cloud her professional judgement. And before long, the unthinkable becomes a shattering reality….

An utterly compelling drama with a timebomb at its core, A Good Enough Mother is a brilliant, beautiful story of mothering, and how to let go of the ones we love when we must.

About the Author
Bev Thomas was a clinical psychologist in the NHS for many years. She currently works as an organizational consultant in mental health and other services. She lives in London with her family.

Mama’s Boy – Dustin Lance Black

Dustin Lance Black wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for Milk and helped overturn California’s anti–gay marriage Proposition 8, but as an LGBTQ activist he has unlikely origins—a conservative Mormon household outside San Antonio, Texas. His mother, Anne, was raised in rural Louisiana and contracted polio when she was two years old. She endured brutal surgeries, as well as braces and crutches for life, and was told that she would never have children or a family. Willfully defying expectations, she found salvation in an unlikely faith, raised three rough-and-rowdy boys, and escaped the abuse and violence of two questionably devised Mormon marriages before finding love and an improbable career in the U.S. civil service.

By the time Lance came out to his mother at age twenty-one, he was a blue-state young man studying the arts instead of going on his Mormon mission. She derided his sexuality as a sinful choice and was terrified for his future. It may seem like theirs was a house destined to be divided, and at times it was. This story shines light on what it took to remain a family despite such division—a journey that stretched from the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court to the woodsheds of East Texas. In the end, the rifts that have split a nation couldn’t end this relationship that defined and inspired their remarkable lives.

Mama’s Boy is their story. It’s a story of the noble quest for a plane higher than politics—a story of family, foundations, turmoil, tragedy, elation, and love. It is a story needed now more than ever.

About the Author
Dustin Lance Black is a filmmaker and social activist, known for writing the Academy Award–winning screenplay of the Harvey Milk biopic Milk, and for his part in overturning California’s discriminatory Proposition 8. He divides his time between London and Texas.

Alpha Girls – Julian Guthrie

In Alpha Girls, award-winning journalist Julian Guthrie takes readers behind the closed doors of venture capital, an industry that transforms economies and shapes how we live. We follow the lives and careers of four women who were largely written out of history – until now.

Magdalena Yesil, who arrived in America from Turkey with $43 to her name, would go on to receive her electrical engineering degree from Stanford, found some of the first companies to commercialize internet access, and help Marc Benioff build Salesforce. Mary Jane Elmore went from the corn fields of Indiana to Stanford and on to the storied venture capital firm IVP – where she was one of the first women in the U.S. to make partner – only to be pulled back from the glass ceiling by expectations at home. Theresia Gouw, an overachieving first-generation Asian American from a working-class town, dominated the foosball tables at Brown (she would later reluctantly let Sergey Brin win to help Accel Partners court Google), before she helped land and build companies including Facebook, Trulia, Imperva, and ForeScout. Sonja Hoel, a Southerner who became the first woman investing partner at white-glove Menlo Ventures, invested in McAfee, Hotmail, Acme Packet, and F5 Networks. As her star was still rising at Menlo, a personal crisis would turn her into an activist overnight, inspiring her to found an all-women’s investment group and a national nonprofit for girls.

These women, juggling work and family, shaped the tech landscape we know today while overcoming unequal pay, actual punches, betrayals, and the sexist attitudes prevalent in Silicon Valley and in male-dominated industries everywhere. Despite the setbacks, they would rise again to rewrite the rules for an industry they love. In Alpha Girls, Guthrie reveals their untold stories.

About the Author
Julian Guthrie spent twenty years writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, where she won numerous awards and had her writing nominated multiple times for the Pulitzer Prize. She is the author of three nonfiction books: The Grace of Everyday Saints, The Billionaire and the Mechanic, and How to Make a Spaceship. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.


 

Walking on the Ceiling – Aysegul Savas

After her mother’s death, Nunu moves from Istanbul to a small apartment in Paris. One day outside of a bookstore, she meets M., an older British writer whose novels about Istanbul Nunu has always admired. They find themselves walking the streets of Paris and talking late into the night. What follows is an unusual friendship of eccentric correspondence and long walks around the city.

M. is working on a new novel set in Turkey and Nunu tells him about her family, hoping to impress and inspire him. She recounts the idyllic landscapes of her past, mythical family meals, and her elaborate childhood games. As she does so, she also begins to confront her mother’s silence and anger, her father’s death, and the growing unrest in Istanbul. Their intimacy deepens, so does Nunu’s fear of revealing too much to M. and of giving too much of herself and her Istanbul away. Most of all, she fears that she will have to face her own guilt about her mother and the narratives she’s told to protect herself from her memories.

A wise and unguarded glimpse into a young woman’s coming into her own, Walking on the Ceiling is about memory, the pleasure of invention, and those places, real and imagined, we can’t escape.

About the Author
Ayşegül Savaş grew up in Turkey and Denmark. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Guernica, and elsewhere, and was shortlisted for the Glimmer Train Fiction Prize and the Graywolf Emerging Writers Award. She has an MFA from the University of San Francisco. She teaches at the Sorbonne and lives in Paris.

The Weight of a Piano – Chris Cander

For fans of Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, Annie Proulx’s Accordion Crimes, Amanda Coplin’s The Orchardist

A tour-de-force about two women and the piano that inexorably ties their lives together through time and across continents, for better and for worse.

In 1962, in the Soviet Union, eight-year-old Katya is bequeathed what will become the love of her life: a Blüthner piano, built at the turn of the century in Germany, on which she discovers everything that she herself can do with music and what music, in turn, does for her. Yet after marrying, she emigrates with her young family from Russia to America, at her husband’s frantic insistence, and her piano is lost in the shuffle.
In 2012, in Bakersfield, California, twenty-six-year-old Clara Lundy loses another boyfriend and again has to find a new apartment, which is complicated by the gift her father had given her for her twelfth birthday, shortly before he and her mother died in a fire that burned their house down: a Blüthner upright she has never learned to play. Orphaned, she was raised by her aunt and uncle, who in his car-repair shop trained her to become a first-rate mechanic, much to the surprise of her subsequent customers. But this work, her true mainstay in a scattered life, is put on hold when her hand gets broken while the piano’s being moved–and in sudden frustration she chooses to sell it. And what becomes crucial is who the most interested party turns out to be. . .


About the Author
CHRIS CANDER graduated from the Honors College at the University of Houston, in the city where she was raised and still lives, with her husband, daughter, and son. For seven years she has been a writer-in-residence for Writers in the Schools there. She serves on the Inprint advisory board and stewards several Little Free Libraries in her community. Her first novel,11 Stories, won the Independent Publisher Gold Medal for Popular Fiction, and her most recent, Whisper Hollow, was long-listed for the Great Santini Fiction Prize by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. She is also the author of The Word Burglar, which won the 2014 Moonbeam Children’s Book Award (silver).

Praise For The Weight of a Piano: A novel…

“A charming, puzzling plot that gets more exciting and addictive the deeper you sink into it. . . . Cander’s unadorned prose composes some truly beautiful descriptions of the joy of music.”—Leslie Hinson, BookPage [starred]

The Weight of a Piano showcases [Cander’s] development as a powerful storyteller, reminding me of Accordion Crimes by the great Annie Proulx. . . .  [This is] an original, creative tackling of the essentially solitary human condition; the effort required of women to claim full personhood; and the frightening vulnerability necessary to connect with another, defiant in the face of the transitory nature of all things”—Michelle Newby, Lone Star Literary

“Cander interweaves a surprising, time-jumping plot with a deep understanding of her characters’ emotional landscapes. The Weight of a Piano is also an exploration of the healing and cathartic powers of art and music, making it the perfect gift for the creatives in your life.”—Elena Nicolaou, Refinery29

“[An] extraordinary tale of pain, fear, loss and love. . . . The Weight of a Piano is a touching story of survival–for two families, two girls, and an instrument.”—Jim Alkon, BookTrib.com

“In The Weight of a Piano, two women are linked by one instrument. . . . Chris Cander masterfully reveals how these women’s lives connect (and how the piano came to be made) and, in the process, meditates on grief and living in the past.”—Elizabeth Sile, Real Simple “Five Books That Won’t Disappoint”

“This beautiful tale . . . is impossible to put down and impossible to forget.”—Library Journal [starred]

“Strong characterization and attention to detail, whether in the manufacture of a piano or in the desolate beauty of Death Valley, elevate Cander’s tale about learning to let go of the past.”—Booklist

“Deftly plotted and well written, a gentle meditation on the healing power of art–and its limitations. . . . Cander grabs the reader in her bravura, thickly detailed opening pages [and] expertly parcels out her revelations [as] she builds parallel narratives [toward] an odd but beautiful finale.”–Kirkus Reviews[starred]

“Like Werner Herzog’s FitzcarraldoThe Weight of a Piano is a visionary work about the madness inherent in all art and the burdens of history that give rise to art and must be carried in turn. The miracle of this wonderful novel is to place an object, weighted with history, in a locale where we would never expect to find it, making the unexpected both palpable and real, and by doing so, this beautiful, intricate novel gives us one indelible picture after another, each one written in a different key.”–Charles Baxter

The Weight of a Piano tenderly illuminates the solace–and the suffering–that art can bring to those who have endured grievous loss. Cander’s ingenious plot braids together vividly disparate geographies and times, swerving deliciously whenever we think we know where she’s heading. She understands love and terror and the uncanny power of inheritance.”–Pamela Erens

“Cander takes readers into new and uncharted territory with a story that spans a century, continents, cultures, and many lives. This novel is sly and sexy and serendipitous, and through the magic and wisdom surrounding a single piano it helps to restore what is beautiful in both art and life. To me, The Weight of a Piano already feels indelible.”–Peter Geye

“At the heart of this novel is an old German upright piano whose music reverberates through the stories of two seemingly unconnected people: a man on an inexplicable quest to photograph it, and a woman who, despite being unable to play it, can’t let it go. Elegantly twisting the strands together, Cander explores how art and music change and enrich our lives, often in wondrous and remarkable ways, and also touches on love and loss, memory and forgetting, perseverance and self-discovery. Like a powerful melody, The Weight of a Piano is haunting, evocative, and impossible to forget.”–Christina Baker Kline

“Cander’s portrait of two powerful women and the heartbreaking intersection of their families is arresting and affecting, but as all its characters would agree, the real heart of this novel is the Blüthner upright piano we track from its soundboard’s origin in a Romanian forest: an instrument so charismatic that for both women it’s a way of floating above their world and connecting to a lost home, as well as eventually to a version of themselves they’ve never before considered. The Weight of a Piano soars when it obsesses and lets us see what it is it hears.”—Jim Shepard

Cuba Libre!: Che, Fidel, and the Improbable Revolution That Changed World History – Tony Perrottet

The surprising story of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and the scrappy band of rebel men and women who followed them.

Most people are familiar with the basics of the Cuban Revolution of 1956–1959: it was led by two of the twentieth century’s most charismatic figures, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara; it successfully overthrew the island nation’s US–backed dictator; and it quickly went awry under Fidel’s rule.

But less is remembered about the amateur nature of the movement or the lives of its players. In this wildly entertaining and meticulously researched account, historian and journalist Tony Perrottet unravels the human drama behind history’s most improbable revolution: a scruffy handful of self-taught revolutionaries—many of them kids just out of college, literature majors, and art students, and including a number of extraordinary women—who defeated 40,000 professional soldiers to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Cuba Libre!’s deep dive into the revolution reveals fascinating details: How did Fidel’s highly organized lover Celia Sánchez whip the male guerrillas into shape? Who were the two dozen American volunteers who joined the Cuban rebels? How do you make land mines from condensed milk cans—or, for that matter, cook chorizo à la guerrilla (sausage guerrilla-style)?

Cuba Libre! is an absorbing look back at a liberation movement that captured the world’s imagination with its spectacular drama, foolhardy bravery, tragedy, and, sometimes, high comedy—and that set the stage for Cold War tensions that pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war.

About the Author
Tony Perrottet is the author of five books: Off the Deep End, Pagan Holiday, The Naked Olympics, Napoleon’s Privates, and The Sinner’s Grand Tour. His travel stories have been translated into a dozen languages and widely anthologized, having been selected six times for the Best American Travel Writing series. He is a regular television guest on the History Channel and a contributing writer at Smithsonian Magazine; his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler, T+L, Outside, Surface, and the London Sunday Times. He lives in New York.


Praise For Cuba Libre!: Che, Fidel, and the Improbable Revolution That Changed World History

“Perrottet does an excellent job capturing the absurdities that came with the revolution…Cuba Libre! brings history to life with thorough research and wildly addictive writing.”
Newsday

“An excellent chronology of Cuba’s liberation—dramatic, human, and illuminating.”
Paul Theroux, author of The Great Railway Bazaar

“An excellent new entry on the subject, with a memorable opening line and highly enjoyable chapters. If you read only one recent book on Cuba, have it be this delightful popular history.”
—Library Journal (starred)

“Perrottet’s history excels in putting a human face on the fighters…the revolution’s real stars were the smart and strong women whoacted as spies, couriers, logistical experts, and ultimately as the bravest, fiercest, and most indispensible combatants.”
Booklist

“Fast-paced and highly entertaining.”
—Book Page

“Tony Perrottet sure knows how to tell a story — and what a story this is! With Cuba Libre!, Perrottet takes us far beyond the basic facts of the Cuban revolution to the juicy details that remind us that history is deeply human: Fidel’s appearance on the Ed Sullivan show was followed by a poodle fashion parade; the rebels loved to read Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls between operations in the mountains; breaded snake cutlets were a favorite snack…. Perrottet gained access to private letters, diaries, and other documents no other historian has seen, and he has written a fabulous account of one of the most unlikely, romantic, astounding events of the 20th century.”
—Chris Ryan, New York Times-bestselling author of Sex at Dawn and Civilized to Death

“Cuba cracked open its treasure chest of historical archives for Tony Perrottet and he uncovered so many long-lost secrets about the Revolution that even those who think they know all about Fidel’s improbable victory will end up shaking their heads in disbelief. Commanders who act like a Caribbean Rat Pack. Military maneuvers that resemble an Oceans Eleven escapade. And a series of long, long shots that, incredibly, paid off for the Castros. Perrottet tells this familiar story in an unforgettable way that is as raucous as it is revealing.”
—Anthony DePalma, author of The Man Who Invented Fidel

“Sexy, humorous, fast-moving and deeply-researched, Cuba Libre! overturns the mythology of the Cuban Revolution, while finding the genuinely epic dimensions of the island and its history. From the debauched present of Havana to the rebellious past of Santiago, the gimlet-eyed Tony Perrottet is a canny guide to all the dreams and miseries of Cuba. Should be banned by the Communist Party.”
—Patrick Symmes, author of Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Che Legend and The Boys From Dolores: Fidel Castro’s Schoolmates from Revolution to Exile