Guevara, Also Known As Che

Rating:
Summary: Alive.
Review: Che Guevara was here before he was born. Che Guevara is still here after his assasination. He represents the highest feelings andconcepts on justice, rebellion and freedom against any kind of tirany. That's why his photo is world-spread by palestinians, puertoricans, cubans, mexicans, germans, koreans. That's why his life of sacrifice and example can't never be erased.

VOS SOS EL CAMINO, NOSOTROS LOS CAMINANTES.

Rating:
Summary: Great book, horrible editing
Review: I read this more because I am a fan of Taibo than because of Che, but I have read other biographies of Che and this is clearly the best I've seen - one of the best biographies I have read, in fact. He makes you feel as though you knew him yourself.

This edition, at least, misses getting a five-star rating from me, however, due to the perfectly atrocious editing! There are literally hundreds of typos, misspellings, poorly phrased sentences, etc. It is very distracting.

Rating:
Summary: Mixed feelings
Review: I took the 1997 first edition of this book on a recent trip to Cuba, and have just now finished it. I hope the current paperback edition is better. The edition I read contained more typos and translation errors than any book I've ever read -- my estimate is at least 300 in number. A further deficiency in this book is the lack of maps, which makes following Che's Cuban campaign extremely confusing, and I never fully understood the campaign until I saw a map of it in Havana's Museum of the Revolution.

The book is basically a chronological review of Che's life and at 600 pages it's an exhaustive review. Its unique feature is that all words attributed to Che are in bold print. There are a number of photographs, but the qualtiy of reproduction is poor.

Despite these deficiencies, the book was a real page-turner and I recommend it for anyone who wants to understand one of the most remarkable men of the 20th Century. Possibly, you will find as I did, that in this case the man is actually bigger than the myth.

Rating:
Summary: BUY IT!
Review: I was walking around wearing one of those 'Che' T-shirts and a guy asked me some questions about him. I felt pretty stupid not knowing more than I did. So I started reading about Che. That was 3 years ago.
I have read his diaries, speeches, FBI files, everything I could find....THIS was the BEST.
The author is truly a Che fan, but he still points out mistakes Che made, but the best thing is he provides everything in its context. He builds the background of where Che came from, what his life was. The reader FEELS 50's 60's Latin America so you can really emphasize with the actions and emotions of the integral characters.
Sum it up, even though it was a factual biography I still was totally engrossed reading 500 some pages in about 3 days, and still re-reading it.
A pleasure.

Rating:
Summary: reader
Review: I would recomend this book to anyone,however, I thought Anderson went into much greater detail regarding Che's travels throughout Latin america and especially, his discriptions of the once dominating United Fruit Company. I really enjoyed this authors discriptions of the autrocites commited by Batista and his sectet police, he was a brutal american, puppet dictator. How can any american actually belive that america has allways stook for freadom around the world.

Rating:
Summary: The Most Enjoyable of Che's Biographies
Review: In the US, Paco Taibo II is better known within the mystery readers' crowd for his accomplished police stories with a touch of irony and a shrewd writing style. For this reason with certain apprehension I started reading this biography. In fact it was the first complete and serious Che's bio I have ever read. Later I grabbed Jon Lee Anderson's one... Of all Che's bios Paco's is the most enchanting one. It may lack the huge documention of Anderson's book, but it compensates it with an amazing style. Paco cannot divorce his own admiration of Che from his subject, but, hey, that is exactly why this book becomes so much enjoyable. I still recall grabbing the book (700 hundred pages!) one morning and going that same night to bed with the book in my hands! I couldn't stop reading it! Che's story is reflected under the light of an amazing storyteller. The episodes of Che's story are exquisitely threaded together in a masterful way. His life becomes flesh and blood in Paco's hands. The icon, the symbol of rebellion and struggle for social justice turns a man, an incredible, passionate and admirable human being throughout the book. The end cannot be better: it is ghostly but hopeful with a lot of energy and sadness and beauty: a song to Latin American history of struggle.

Rating:
Summary: A Collective Missed Opportunity
Review: Of two most recent books on the life and death of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, this is the most personal and personable. Paco Taibo's translated writing touches the reader with the untouchable moments of Che's life, leaving behind the hype, the political interventions and propositions, and the devious subterfuge of reading into or out of events the vision of Che as a misguided revolutionary. Taibo tells us about a naive man who only near the end came to the beginnings of understanding how revolutions cannot be institutionalized. However, this excellent book is one star shy of perfect because of numerous typos and misspellings as well as horrible mix-ups of words and phrases in the middle of what would have been otherwise a seamless joy to read. Buy the book and read it, but have a blue pencil in hand so that, once you find the butchery of the text, you can excise it in true revolutionary fashion, so that others who come to read later will not have to suffer the confusion of trying to understand a very understandable man. Para que el Che viva, lo podremos creer.

Rating:
Summary: A Collective Missed Opportunity
Review: Of two most recent books on the life and death of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, this is the most personal and personable. Paco Taibo's translated writing touches the reader with the untouchable moments of Che's life, leaving behind the hype, the political interventions and propositions, and the devious subterfuge of reading into or out of events the vision of Che as a misguided revolutionary. Taibo tells us about a naive man who only near the end came to the beginnings of understanding how revolutions cannot be institutionalized. However, this excellent book is one star shy of perfect because of numerous typos and misspellings as well as horrible mix-ups of words and phrases in the middle of what would have been otherwise a seamless joy to read. Buy the book and read it, but have a blue pencil in hand so that, once you find the butchery of the text, you can excise it in true revolutionary fashion, so that others who come to read later will not have to suffer the confusion of trying to understand a very understandable man. Para que el Che viva, lo podremos creer.

Rating:
Summary: Mission Impossible
Review: Taibo good naturedly portrays Che's down to earth blemishes, like a loving brother who understands the strengths and weakenesses a family member. With plenty of direct quotes, the only way to get more ideas on Che's experience in the Sierra Maestra after reading this would seem to be from reading Che's own writing. The overall picture I saw painted in Taibo's book was not that Che accomplished little in his short (compared to others like Mao) revolutionary life (asked shorty before his death what he was thinking, "I'm thinking of the immortality of the revolution, so feared by those you serve."), but that what Che aspired to was too difficult, too complicated, to impossible for a mere mortal. To his nervous executioner moments before death, "Take it easy, you're going to kill a man."

Rating:
Summary: The life and death of a Latin-American hero
Review: This book is a recount or recollection of data based on events related to the life of Ernesto Guevara known as "El Che". In some sense, the book contains a lack of analysis and interpretation of the information, an aspect Jorge Castañeda (another Che's biographer) does better. In my opinion, the best chapters are the last ones where the author, using a more sensitive (and closer) approach towards his subject, narrates the events sorrounding his death at the jungles of Bolivia. I have to confess that I felt very moved.

Guevara is actually the last in a long list of tragic figures of the Latin-American tradition: Atahualpa, Tupac Amaru, Sandino, José Martí...If you may find him anachronistic, just think about General Patton crossing the harsh European winter with the Third Army.

This book should be read at a counterpoint with Castañeda's and Anderson's ones and a close observation of the chapters which serve as a kind of epilogue that converts the book in a kind of John Le Carre novel should be noticed. Because maybe the information that is not there becomes more important; the question that remains unanswered is who to blame for the terrible death Che suffered in Bolivia? He, himself as it have been said because he was a romantic? Fidel Castro alone as the easy legend turned into gossip says? or a whole chain of political intrigue related to the last years of the Cold War? So researchers, historians, writers and scholars are invited: the story of Che's life (and death) is not a closed chapter.

A book I strongly recommend as a last advice and new beginning is Jorge Ricardo Masetti's "El furor y el delirio", Barcelona, Tusquets (an English version is available) by the son of Argentine journalist of the same name and a friend of Che.