Rate this book

The Sugar King Of Havana: The Rise And Fall Of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last Tycoon (2010)

by John Paul Rathbone(Favorite Author)

3.45 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1594202583 (ISBN13: 9781594202582)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Penguin Press HC, The

review 1: I read this because I was curious about what conditions were really like for a "sugar king" in pre-Castro Cuba. In this it was useful, but only selectively so. There are some good descriptions in here of Lobo's operations, his rise, his work conditions, his industry. And then there is the other 80% of stuff, which includes taking a page for every possible distraction (anytime something is tangentially referenced, it gets a whole page about what the reference is referring to), long digressions about the author's mother, and things of that nature. I ended up just skimming/skipping these sections. It's too bad, because it could have been a taught story. Instead it is pretty bloated and slow.
review 2: Rathbone, son of a Cuban exile, uses the life of Julian Lobo (f... morerom a family of converso Venezuelan Jews) to frame the history of Cuba in the first half of the 20th century--and, like the Bosch family of Bacardi, illustrate the complexity of the Cuban revolutions, backed by rich liberal industrialists (some corrupt, some ruthlessly successful, some combination of both), many of whom had assisted Castro to overthrow Batista. less

Download links for: The Sugar King of Havana: The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last Tycoon

Advertising