In 1970 a young dancer named Alma Guillermoprieto left New York to take a job teaching at Cuba s National School of Dance. For six months, she worked in mirrorless studios (it was considered more revolutionary); her poorly trained but ardent students worked without them but dreamt of greatness. Yet in the midst of chronic shortages and revolutionary upheaval, Guillermoprieto found in Cuba a people whose sense of purpose touched her forever.
In this electrifying memoir, Guillermoprieto now an award-winning journalist and arguably one of our finest writers on Latin America resurrects a time...

From the esteemed New Yorker correspondent comes an incisive volume of essays and reportage that vividly illuminates Latin America s recent history. Only Alma Guillermoprieto, the most highly regarded writer on the region, could unravel the complex threads of Colombia s cocaine wars or assess the combination of despotism, charm, and political jiu-jitsu that has kept Fidel Castro in power for more than 40 years. And no one else can write with such acumen and sympathy about statesmen and campesinos, leftist revolutionaries and right-wing militias, and political figures from Evita...

A collection of essays by the grea-grandniece of Leo Tolstoy offers reflections on Russian politics, culture, and literature, discussing such widely diverse topics as Soviet women, Russian cookery, and the influence of Pushkin and freedom on Russian authors. Original.

For one year, Alma Guillermoprieto lived in Manguiera, a village near Rio de Janeiro, to learn the ritual of samba--the sensuous song and dance marked by a rapturous beat--and to take part in Rio's renowned carnivale parade.