Listen, Yankee! ─ Why Cuba Matters

Fresh insight about one of history's most enigmatic of relationships between nation states, from one of America's best known voices of political and social activism.

Cuba and the US is informed by the author's unique history—not only as an observer of Cuba's complex and intricate past, but also as a US revolutionary student leader whose efforts to mobilize political change in the US mirrored a simultaneous radical transformation in Cuba.

Chapters are devoted to the writings of Che Guevara, Regis Debray, and C. Wright Mills; the Cuban Missile Crisis; the Weather Underground; the assassination of JFK; the strong historical links between Cuba and Africa; the Carter era; the Clinton era; Cuban 5; and Elian Gonzalez.

Hayden documents the remarkable influence Cuba has had across Latin America. Perhaps most importantly, he rightly presents the great opportunity both countries now have to finally find common ground to the advantage of Cubans and Americans alike.

Author of the famed Port Huron Statement, TOM HAYDEN was a leader in the student, antiwar, and civil rights protests in the 1960s. He took up the environmental cause in the 1970s, leading campaigns to shut down nuclear power plants and serving as California's first solar energy official. He was elected to the Califorinia legislature in 1982, serving for eighteen years. He continues to write as an editor of The Nation, and has taught at many campuses from Harvard's Institute of Politics to UCLA's labor studies center. He is the director of the Peace and Justice Resource Center in California.