Trading with the Enemy - by Tom Miller (Paperback)

About the Book

A travel classic, revised after twenty years: a journalist's lyrical account of life in Castro's Cuba.

Book Synopsis

Granted unprecedented access to travel throughout the country, this lively travelogue presents us with rare insight into one of the world's only Communist countries.

"Havana knew me by my shoes," begins Tom Miller's lively and entertaining account of his sojourn for more than eight months traveling through Cuba, mixing with its literati and black marketers, its cane cutters and cigar rollers. Its best-known personalities and ordinary citizens talk to him about the U.S. embargo and tell their favorite Fidel jokes as they stand in line for bread at the Socialism or Death Bakery.

Miller provides a running commentary on Cuba's food shortages, exotic sensuality, and baseball addiction as he follows the scents of Graham Greene, JosÃ(c)arti, Ernest Hemingway, and the Mambo Kings. The result of this informed and adventurous journey is a vibrant, rhythmic portrait of a land and people too long shielded from American eyes.

About the Author

Tom Miller is a veteran of the underground press of the 1960s. His work has appeared in Smithsonian, The New Yorker, LIFE, The New York Times, Natural History, and many other publications. He has appeared on NBC, NPR, CNN, HBO, XM, and CSPAN, among other broadcast outlets. He has been affiliated with the University of Arizona's Latin American Area Center since 1990, and makes his home in Tucson with his wife, Regla Albarr'n.