West Indies

In Fantasy Island, Ed Morales traces how, over the years, Puerto Rico has served as a colonial satellite, a Cold War Caribbean showcase, a dumping ground for US manufactured goods, and a corporate tax shelter. He also shows how it has become a blank canvas for mercenary experiments in disaster capitalism on the frontlines of climate change, hamstrung by internal political corruption and the US federal government's prioritization of outside financial interests.

The Elements of Cricket is a cricket book unlike any other published before, an extraordinary, eccentric guide and charming visual representation of the game, from the weather and wood that make it possible to the achievements of its greatest and most famous players. The book is divided into the three parts that make up the fundamental elements of cricket: bat, ball and field. Their harmony produces cricket’s unique environment; their centuries’ long conflict provides its innovation, adaptability and vast psychological hinterland.

In Colonizing Paradise, historian Jefferson Dillman charts the broad spectrum of sentiments that British citizens and travelers held regarding their colonial possessions in the West Indies. Because British sentiments in the Caribbean located danger and evil not just in indigenous populations but in Spanish Catholics as well, Dillman’s work begins with the arrival of Spanish explorers and conquistadors. Colonizing Paradise spans the arrival of English ships and continues through the early nineteenth century and the colonial era.

Una Marson’s work embodied anti-colonialism, anti-racism, feminism, class politics, and pan-Africanism in the first half of the 20th century. Her poetry and dramatic work symbolically ushered in a new era in Jamaica’s literary landscape, and her efforts in championing early Jamaican literature, as well as her avid support for Caribbean writers in Britain and the region, made her a key proponent of the development of a national and West Indian literary canon.

The English had long dreamed of colonizing America, especially after Sir Francis Drake brought home Spanish treasure and dramatic tales from his raids in the Caribbean. Ambitions of finding gold and planting a New World colony seemed within reach when, in 1606, Thomas Smythe extended overseas trade with the launch of the Virginia Company. But from the beginning the American enterprise was a disaster.

Still unsolved, still baffling, still claiming new victims. Here are the untold stories. A pilot reports a strange haze enveloping his plane, then disappears; 11 hours after fuel starvation, as if calling from a void, he is heard 600 miles away. He requests permission to land, then vanishes forever. A freighter steaming over placid seas disappears without a trace. A pleasure yacht ghosts past without a soul on board. A pilot calls for help because a "weird object" is harassing his plane. A jet collides with an "unknown" and is never found.

In a sweeping account, Atlantic Wars explores how warfare shaped the experiences of the peoples living in the watershed of the Atlantic Ocean between the late Middle Ages and the Age of Revolution.

A compelling account of history's most famous pirate. The Pirate King is the compelling true story of a Welshman who became one of the most ruthless and brutal buccaneers of the golden age of piracy. The inspiration for dozens of fictionalized pirates in film, television, and literature - as well the namesake of one of the world's most popular rum brands - Captain Sir Henry Morgan was matchless among pirates and privateers.

This audiobook exposes the misconceptions, half-truths, and outright lies that have shaped the still dominant but largely mythical version of what happened in the White House during those harrowing two weeks of secret Cuban missile crisis deliberations. A half-century after the event it is surely time to demonstrate, once and for all, that RFK's Thirteen Days and the personal memoirs of other ExComm members cannot be taken seriously.

This is a concise history, intended for travellers, but of inestimable value to anyone looking for an overview of the Caribbean and its mainland coastal states, with a focus on the past few centuries. The history of the Caribbean does not make much sense without factoring in the cities - Pensacola, New Orleans, Galveston - and the ambitions of the states on its continental shores, notably the United States. This account is grounded in a look at the currents and channels of the sea, and its constraints, followed by the history of 'pre-contact' civilisations.

Earl Lovelace is a major Caribbean writer, one of the few of his generation to have lived in and written almost exclusively from the region. With sharp observation and even sharper wit, his writing pulses with the rhythm, flow, and vibrancy of the lives of “ordinary” people, whose culture and language he champions. In this brief but rich biography, Funso Aiyejina explores the writer and his work with the intimacy of a friend and the perceptiveness of a scholar.

This audiobook tells the story of how Spain managed to conquer the Americas in the span of half a century, from the late 1400s to the mid-1500s. Although exploitation and warfare continued between the colonizers and the colonized after this period, the largest campaigns against the indigenous peoples were undertaken in this short time span, which is the focus of this audiobook.

The 30-year regime of Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier, who ruled between 1957 and 1986, was arguably the most repressive in the Western hemisphere. Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier looks at how the father and son duo rose to power, and the results of their tight grip over Haiti.

In 1609, two years after its English founding, colonists struggled to stay alive in a tiny fort at Jamestown. John Smith fought to keep order. When he left, desperate colonists ate lizards, rats, and human flesh. Meanwhile, the Virginia-bound Sea Venture was shipwrecked on Bermuda, the dreaded, uninhabited “Isle of Devils”. Bermuda became England’s second New World colony in 1612. A Tale of Two Colonies examines the existing sources on the colonies, sets them in a transatlantic context, and weighs them against circumstantial evidence.

Successful sea rovers were careful practitioners of a complex profession that sought wealth by stratagem and force of arms. Drawn from the European tradition, yet of various races and nationalities, they raided both ship and town throughout much of the world from roughly 1630 until 1730. Using a variety of innovative tactics and often armed with little more than musket and grenade, many of these self-described "soldiers and privateers" successfully assaulted fortifications, attacked shipping from small craft, and even circumnavigated the globe.

Pirates dominate movie box-office profits, they are theme park entertainment, and they occupy a place in popular culture that has outlasted the era when they originally ruled the seas. Contemporary audiences who are safe from the pistols and cutlasses of the men who sailed the Caribbean, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans to prey upon ships and claim their cargo may find it hard to reconcile the perceived glamour of Captain Jack Sparrow with the authentic bloodlust and greed of the real pirates who killed without conscience, and ravaged, bribed, and robbed their way into legend.

This audiobook narrated by Tony Chiroldes traces the multifaceted history of Puerto Rico from pre-Columbian times to today.

In 1948 the former troop ship Windrush made the 30-day journey across the Atlantic from Jamaica. The arrival of its 500 passengers, the first generation of Caribbean migrants in the UK, was the initial step in the formation of a new identity: the black Briton. Fifty years later, Mike and Trevor Phillips spoke to those on the Windrush itself, as well as those who followed, to tell the story of Britain in the second half of the twentieth century through the eyes of the outsiders who became insiders.

The era of piracy in the Caribbean began in the 1500s and died out in the 1830s after the navies of the nations of Western Europe and North America with colonies in the Caribbean began combating pirates. In the early 18th century, a number of the great pirate captains, including Edward "Blackbeard" Teach and "Black Sam" Bellamy, joined forces. This infamous "Pirating Gang" was more than simply a thieving band of brothers.

Esta es una historia mínima de un fenómeno complejo y cambiante, en un periodo de dos décadas, llamado Revolución cubana. Mínima historia, en el sentido que dio a estos términos el historiador mexicano Daniel Cosío Villegas, allá por los años setenta. El autor de esta obra repasa las líneas maestras del cambio económico, social, político y cultural que vivió la isla entre los años cincuenta y setenta del pasado siglo.