"Depicts the swaggering, corrupt, erratic, and often violent years of rule by Fidel Castro of Cuba, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, and François Duvalier of Haiti. Suitcases full of cash, torture chambers, gunboats, coups, dictatorship, and revolutionary fervor spill out of these pages....Captures the missile crisis as a frightening and real dance of knives in a dusty Caribbean cockfighting square." --David E. Hoffman, The Washington Post
"Deftly juggles the stories of three countries---Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic---and their relationships with the superpowers, where things were not as they seemed...Von Tunzelmann tells stories so bizarre as to be beyond any but the most grotesque horror films....It is good to see this tale, so often seen in world terms, as part of a contiguous regional story." --
The Guardian (London) "A sweeping history...Von Tunzelmann writes with the same verve and range of material she deployed in
Indian Summer, a praised treatment of the end of the [Indian] British Empire." --
Financial Times (London) "A mesmerizing, Conradian tale where the truth is almost too dark to bear. A remarkably gripping popular history." --
Kirkus Reviews "Von Tunzelmann's diligent work will widen the eyes of cold war buffs." --
Booklist "Irresistible . . . A fascinating book that may well change how we look on the benighted world in which we live today." --
Los Angeles Times on Indian Summer "Stirring . . . Von Tunzelmann's brisk narrative is propelled forward by the personalities of five memorable individuals who all wanted and worked for independence. . . . Absorbingly readable." --
Fortune on Indian Summer "[
Indian Summer] removes the veil from the colorful personalities and events behind India's independence and partition with Pakistan. . . . Von Tunzelmann writes with authority and confidence." --
The Washington Post on Indian Summer "[A] captivating group portrait, pulling forth the most telling details of each figure's inner life . . . To have turned an era of such significance and continuing relevance into a page-turner, to both entertain and educate, is an admirable accomplishment." --
San Francisco Chronicle on Indian Summer "This brilliantly written, dramatic, and at times controversial account of empire in India is almost impossible to put down. With it, von Tunzelmann has proven herself a force with which to be reckoned, both as a writer and as an historian." --
Caroline Elkins, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya, on Indian Summer "A brilliantly vivid page-turner that captures the backstage dramas raging on the eve of India's independence." --
Tina Brown on Indian Summer
