Cuba A Short History edited by Leslie Bethell consists of four long essays by four different scholarly authors. It covers the time from the Eighteenth Century to the present. I found this to be a very even handed book, neither anti Castro nor pro US. The essays did show the controls the US put on Cuba through the Platt Amendment after the 1898 Spanish American War put unfair limits on Cuba. To make Cuba safe for US business interests Cubans were limited in how they could develop and prosper in their own country. The US supported several brutal and unsavory dictators who were good for US business interests but not for Cubans own development. The final essay by Jorge Dominguez of Harvard gave a great amount of detail of the ups and downs of Cubans economy during the Castro years. Since my recent visit to Cuba I have realized I didn't know nearly enough about the island's history. This book was a good start to correcting that deficiency. ( )