Absolved?

"'No sober person in Latin America wants to adopt the Cuban system. But wherever he went in Latin America he received a raving ovation,' said Wayne Smith, a veteran U.S. diplomat who served in Havana. 'Why? Because he stood up to the United States, told us where to go, and got away with it."

Carol J. Williams in the Los Angeles Times writes an obituary for Fidel Castro.

Thirteen Daze

Michael Dobbs in The New York Times and Jon Wiener in the Los Angeles Times discuss the legacy of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

As does Benjamin Schwartz in The Atlantic.

"One of the Finest One-Volume Histories of the Rise and Fall of Modern Slavery"

"Blackburn also rejects the idea that emancipation arose from what he calls 'latent virtue,' a comforting notion sometimes invoked by American historians to excuse the founding fathers for lack of action against slavery on the grounds that their ideals set in motion the abolition process. High ideals alone did not abolish slavery. And while not neglecting slave agency, Blackburn argues that the concessions and customary rights wrested by slaves from their owners over a long period of day-to-day struggle did not pose a fundamental challenge to the system. Rather, he insists, emancipation emerged from specific historical circumstances—a nexus of slave resistance, ideological conflict and political crisis."

In The Nation, Eric Foner reviews Robin Blackburn's The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights.

Che Nous

"Casey traces this notion of infiltration, of cross-pollination, of how, in an image-based culture, content and context are inextricably interwoven, and almost never in the ways we intend. The photo is a perfect example: a snapshot that became a symbol, whether as a banner in street protests or on T-shirts for the liberal and well-heeled. 'Che,' Casey writes, 'became the quintessential postmodern icon--anything to anyone and everything to everyone.'"

David L. Ulin reviews Michael Casey's Che's Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image in the Los Angeles Times.

And one can explore the image's legacy here.

Say Hello to My Little Friend

"Piece of art, did he say? The same movie where Al Pacino buries his face in pile-high drifts of coke and emerges looking like a white-nosed coati? The movie with that trashy robo-disco Giorgio Moroder score that already sounds as dated as the theme from 'Love Story' and the tapestry of profanity so dense you can actually watch a two-minute version of 'Scarface' consisting entirely of the word "fuck" and find it every bit as intelligible as the full-length film?
"Oh, sure, have your laugh, says Tucker. '"Scarface" absorbs ridicule and overexposure and just keeps on going.'"

Louis Bayard in Salon reviews Ken Tucker's Scarface Nation: The Ultimate Gangster Movie and How It Changed America.

Thirteen Days

The Los Angeles Times runs an obit for Richard Stephen Heyser, the U-2 pilot whose photos started the Cuban Missile Crisis.