Che Guevara
A Revolutionary Life (Revised Edition)
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Notable Book of the year.
Acclaimed around the world and a national best-seller, this is the definitive work on Che Guevara, the dashing rebel whose epic dream was to end poverty and injustice in Latin America and the developing world through armed revolution.
Jon Lee Anderson’s biography traces Che’s extraordinary life, from his comfortable Argentine upbringing to the battlefields of the Cuban revolution, from the halls of power in Castro’s government to his failed campaign in the Congo and assassination in the Bolivian jungle.
Anderson has had unprecedented access to the personal archives maintained by Guevara’s widow and carefully guarded Cuban government documents. He has conducted extensive interviews with Che’s comrades—some of whom speak here for the first time—and with the CIA men and Bolivian officers who hunted him down. Anderson broke the story of where Guevara’s body was buried, which led to the exhumation and state burial of the bones. Many of the details of Che’s life have long been cloaked in secrecy and intrigue. Meticulously researched and full of exclusive information, Che Guevara illuminates as never before this mythic figure who embodied the high-water mark of revolutionary communism as a force in history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At 25 (in 1953), Ernesto Guevara de la Serna received his medical degree in Argentina. A conventional career lay ahead if he wanted it. At 39, captured in a quixotic, doomed guerrilla operation in the Bolivian outback unenthusiastically financed by Havana, "Che" was shot to death as he lay trussed on the floor of a village schoolhouse. In the years between, he had metamorphosed from doctor to tramp to revolutionary, discovering his cause and his anti-yanqui resolve in the poverty of Guatemala and as one of the 18 survivors of Fidel Castro's incursion into Cuba. Reckless in promoting his Mao-esque brand of Marxism, he tried to make the Cuban model work in postcolonial Africa and elsewhere in Latin America, expecting that a small but dedicated band of operatives could enlist a burgeoning army of the exploited and overturn oppressive regimes. Anderson (coauthor of Guerrillas), a thorough researcher but a plodding writer, shows that Che found few converts to his religion of fanatical, selfless revolution. Bored with ministerial office in Castro's Cuba, he tried to transplant that country's success. He had a hard time accepting that courageous communist ideologues were rare and that exploited troops tended to melt away when victories didn't come easily. Through letters, speeches, unpublished diaries and numerous interviews, including one with Che's widow, sometimes in overwhelming detail and at daunting length, Anderson establishes as fact suppositions that the CIA's pursuit of Guevara was relentless and probably unnecessary. This huge biography will add to his iconic status. Illustrations not seen by PW.
