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Havana Nocturne: How The Mob Owned Cuba & Then Lost It To The Revolution (2008)

by T.J. English(Favorite Author)

3.83 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0061147710 (ISBN13: 9780061147715)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

William Morrow/HarperCollins (NY)

review 1: This was fun. I have absolutely no 'mob' in me, no greed, no instinct to kill or topple, or even play the business game.I still find mobsters interesting, I don't know why. Maybe because I long to fathom the mentality. Not to emulate, just to understand. Why the tales of these guys always make smile and chuckle I'll never know, but they do. This book is about the rise of the mob in Havana, Cuba in the 40s and 50s, focusing mainly on the true capitalist Meyer Lansky and the Monte Carlo of the Caribbean he tried to create. I finished the book about a week before I recently spent a week in Havana, and stayed in the hotel that Meyer built in the late '50s, the venture that broke him, the classic Riviera Habana. Because of that book, my stay in that high rise hotel was richer a... morend a lot more fun. Just picturing the exploits of the mob entertaining the Hollywood elite in that lobby was so accessible- largely because the decor has been untouched. It was like walking through an episode of Mad Men, season one.The book is fascinating and relates a corner of the American mob's story that's not told in detail very often. There's a great story here of how the mob got things done the right way, and Meyer's dirty dream just might have happened if not for the Cuban revolution.The book is a lot of fun, and it really breezed by.
review 2: Wow.Now, having said that I will try to give a sense of how great I think this book was without giving too much away. I will start by saying that this was as well-written as it was well-researched ~ both top-notch. TJ English understands the weight and flow of choosing just the right words while also getting to the point. He did away with a lot of fictional folklore that has been in all of our heads for far too long. He also brought some gems to light that I had never thought of before. Altogether, this book was as ENTERTAINING as it was ENLIGHTENING. I never had the feeling that he was putting anyone on a pedestal ~ whether evil or saintly. You get a sense of what really happened and at times you really do feel like a mouse in the corner. TJ English takes TWO DIMENSIONAL LEGENDS and makes them into FLESH AND BLOOD human beings. He also takes historical events that we all know by name and makes them feel as real as they did to the people that were impacted by them most. The author used the two most important tools that any writer has in their toolbox ~ Empathy and Truth. And he used them well. Very well indeed.One thing that had never occurred to me is how MOBSTERS were the most consistent BENEFACTORS of American MUSIC from the time of speakeasies in Prohibition America through the 1950s in Cuba. As the Medici's were the godfathers of the renaissance, American mobsters of the first half of the 1900s were really the godfathers of music. It wasn't something they intended or even gave much thought to I'm sure ~ it was just the wonderful byproduct of a very dark enterprise. I truly wonder if American music would have evolved so quickly without them. The thing that struck me the most was the HYPOCRISY of the AMERICAN GOVERNMENT as far as Cuba went. Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower were all cheerleaders for a brutal President and then Dictator (Cuba's Batista). All as a front for US corporations in Cuba. One has to wonder who the real criminals were. Was it greedy US corporations, US politicians, or the mobsters? All three climbed into bed with Batista and got real comfy. And then when the heat went up, all three of them tried to cozy up to Castro. When Castro rebuffed their affections, they all put their efforts into trying to assassinate him. Both the US government and the American mob tried to give arms to Castro to help him win the revolution (just in case he won, they wanted to be on his good side). I was reminded of how many times our government has had this policy when it comes to brutal dictators. It's all about the money it seems. Not much different than organized crime. Is it?The one thing I was the most surprised at was the empathy I was able to have for CASTRO as a young man. I mean, the revolution started out with good intentions. He had a really good point. I mean, they had a leader that was using Cuba to line his own pockets and let people starve. A leader that let foreign interests do what they wanted to as long as he got his cut. A little less greed could have done the Cuban people a lot of good and probably could have staved the revolution. The most poignant thing about the whole revolution was the fact that the people of Cuba traded one brutal dictator for another. I did find it interesting that the three major players, MEYER LANSKY, FULGENCIO BATISTA, and FIDEL CASTRO were much more similar than any of them thought. They were all highly intelligent and pragmatic individuals. They all were able to move mountains and people to their way of thinking. And all of them lived to be very old men even though they often made very risky choices. I found it interesting that both Lansky and Batista came from the poor side of the tracks and Castro came from a very wealthy family. Castro was very well educated and Lansky and Batista were not. Lansky and Batista bonded over their love of books (both having large personal libraries to make up for their lack of formal education). And most interesting was that they all wanted to be gangsters in the beginning. Maybe, Castro most of all.This book brings to life all the players in this fascinating history of the mob in Cuba. It is a very quick read as it is so well written. The author interviewed as many people as he could that were there. For instance, the driver and bodyguard that was with Meyer Lansky on New Years Eve when the REVOLUTION toppled Batista. So there is amazing detail. Also, lots of juicy tidbits on the likes of Frank Sinatra and John Kennedy and Superman (not that one). One also gets a more realistic sense of the history of the mob. It weeds out the legend and what we know from movies like the Godfather and paints a picture that is more realistic than Hollywood can usually muster.I highly recommend this book. It's hard to believe that all of this really happened. It seems larger than life and really does emphasize that truth really is stranger than fiction sometimes. This would also make a great movie (if they let TJ English write the script). less

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