Che Guevara - by Jon Lee Anderson (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"Superb . . . Mr. Anderson does a masterly job in evoking Che's complex character, in separating the man from the myth."--New York Times Book Review

The thirtieth-anniversary edition of the definitive work on Che Guevara, the dashing rebel whose epic dream was to end poverty and injustice in Latin America and beyond through armed revolution, now with a revised introduction and new afterword by the author

Many of the details of Che's life have long been cloaked in secrecy and intrigue. Exhaustively 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.

The book charts an extraordinary life, following Guevara from his comfortable upbringing in Argentina 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 mountains. Anderson 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. He had unprecedented access to the personal archives maintained by Guevara's widow and to carefully guarded Cuban government documents. During his research, Anderson discovered the long-concealed whereabouts of the revolutionary's secretly buried body, which led to the recovery of the remains, their return to Cuba, and their interment at the site of Che's most famous victory.

This anniversary edition has a revised introduction and a new afterword, in which Anderson, who has reported from Cuba for more than three decades, brings the story of Che's long afterlife up to the present day.

Review Quotes

"Groundbreaking . . . Anderson's book is an epic end run around the guardians of the Che legend."--The New Yorker

"Admirably honest [and] staggeringly researched . . . It is unlikely that after Anderson's exhaustive contribution, much more will be learned about Guevara."--Los Angeles Times

"An enduring achievement . . . Anderson has rescued Guevara as an essentially American figure, in the hemispheric sense of the word, one whose victories and failures, equally spectacular, are part of our common history."--The Boston Globe

"You would do well to read Jon Lee Anderson's monumental biography . . . The book's mere table of contents could serve as the syllabus for Che 101."--The Washington Post Book World

"Exhaustive and convincing."--The New York Review of Books

"Obviously a reporter of great energy and enterprise, he scored at least two major scoops in his research . . . genuinely gripping."--Harper's

"Combining contradictory sources and an immense amount of detail, Anderson produces a multifaceted view of Guevara as a person, seething with ambiguities and complexities."--The Nation

"Anderson's account is well rounded and far from uncritical . . . [his] journalistic flair and hard legwork are evident."--Foreign Affairs

"A book that puts the evolution back in revolution, a meticulous record of this extraordinary life."--Newsday

"The book tells as much as is likely to be known about Guevara's end . . . As Mr. Anderson tells it, Che lives."--The Economist

"[Che's] ideal, that curious mixture of resoluteness and recklessness . . . is brilliantly evoked in Jon Lee Anderson's massive biography, which traces, with exacting precision, the avatars of Che's epic life."--The Times Literary Supplement (UK)

"Easily the best so far on Guevara . . . a worthy monument to a flawed but heroic Utopian dreamer."--The Sunday Times (UK)

"Absorbing and convincing because of its wealth of new information and willingness to let Guevara himself speak, in quotations from unpublished letters and diaries . . . An indispensable work of contemporary history."--The Guardian (UK)

"A sweeping biography of the Latino revolutionary and pop-culture hero . . . Students of Che's life and deeds need look no farther than Anderson's volume."--Kirkus Reviews

"[The] best [biography of Che] for its deft style and its details of Che's post-Cuba adventures. It is also the only one to carry interviews with Che's widow, Aleida."--Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Jon Lee Anderson is an author and a staff writer for The New Yorker. A longtime observer of political violence and revolutionary movements, he has reported from many war zones and frequently from Latin America, where he began his career as a reporter for the Lima Times in Peru. For The New Yorker, he has written in-depth profiles of Gabriel García Márquez, Augusto Pinochet, Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro, and Nicolás Maduro, among others. He is the author of seven books, most recently To Lose a War: The Fall and Rise of the Taliban. He lives with his wife in Bridport, England.