The United States and Cuba share a complex, fractious, interconnected history. Before 1959, the United States was the island nation's largest trading partner. But in swift reaction to Cuba's communist revolution, the United States severed all economic ties between the two nations, initiating the longest trade embargo in modern history, one that continues to the presentday. The Cuban Embargo examines the changing politics of U.S. policy toward Cuba over the more than four decades since the revolution.

While the U.S. embargo policy itself has remained relatively stable since its...