Guevara, Also Known as Che

Rating:
Summary: If you want to know what really happened, read this!
Review: Is excelent book. It tells the story how it really happened. It also has pictures and tells everything about the cuban revolution and the latin american revolution.

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.

Rating:
Summary: Very good story, but full of typographical mistakes
Review: This book is undoubtedly an interesting read. I particularly like the quotations from Che himself which are woven seamlessly into the narrative. What I find very irritating, however, are the typographical and sometimes even obvious grammatical mistakes which seem to litter the book from start to finish. I would have thought that more attention would have been paid to this aspect of an otherwise very good story. I may be a bit demanding, but I think these mistakes marred somewhat my enjoyment of this book.

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant work.
Review: This book...what can I say? The author turns the story of Che Guevara into a sentimental, almost romantic story of The Good Fight. Che is the hero who had it all but gave it up for the people. This is a must read for anyone, and I would consider this essential for the person interested in South American and/or revolutionary history, the type of history you will never learn in a North American classroom.

Rating:
Summary: absolutely breath-taking!!!
Review: This is simply the most brilliant and interesting biography of Ernesto "Che" Guevara I have ever read. Extremely intense and passionate!!!

Rating:
Summary: An excellent account of Che's life! Overflowing with detail!
Review: This is the most detailed account of Guevara's life that I have ever come across. It is obvious to the reader that the author has done incredible amounts of research to bring us what I believe to be the finest account of Che's life story...and I've read plenty of them!