Democracies and Tyrannies of the Caribbean by William Krehm. Law- rence Hill, 236 pp. $9.95 (paper). William Krehm, a “Roosevelt lib- eral,” covered Central America and the Caribbean for Time magazine in the early 1940s. Krehm compiled some of his unpublished work in Democracies and Tyrannies, which first appeared in Spanish in 1959-he was unable to find a U.S. publisher willing to print the work. According to Gregorio Selser’s introduction, the clamor ensuing its South American re- lease cost Krehm his job. This is the book’s first English-language publica- tion. Grenada, Island of Conflict: From Amerindians to People’s Revolu- tion, 1498-1979 by George Brizan. Zed Press, 379 pp. $13.95 (paper). George Brizan is an educator who was active with the New Jewel Move- ment for a brief period in 1973, and later ran for prime minister as the New Democratic Party candidate in 1984, when he was defeated by Herbert Blaize. Currently minister of agricul- ture, Brizan promises to remain a dom- inant political force. His long, schol- arly, social history was written in 1984, but ends with the 1979 revolu- tion, serving as an interesting back- ground resource. The Grenada Papers edited by Paul Seabury and Walter A. McDougall. Institute for Contemporary Studies, 350 pp. $8.95 (paper). The intent of this book, as Hoover Institute Senior Research Fellow Sid- ney Hook states in his introduction, is to “destroy the assumptions that dominate the thought,” of those “who believe that revolutions are brought about primarily by poverty, deprivation and oppression, and are never engineered by subversive politi- cal action.” These documents are ex- traordinary, and hardly need the em- bellishing by the Right-funded ICS. The original documents are not repro- duced in full, the explanatory text is not useful and the “canons of editorial practice” employed here are decidedly unorthodox-illegible passages are “interpretively deciphered,” but not so marked. Serious students would do better to consult the originals released by the United States Information Agency. In Nobody’s Backyard: Maurice Bishop’s Speeches, 1979-1983 edited by Chris Searle. Zed Press, 260 pp. $10.75 (paper). This collection of speeches is from the last years of Maurice Bishop’s life, and includes his last interview. The introduction is by Richard Hart, who became Grenadian attorney gen- eral in 1982 and left the island after the U.S. invasion. Between Slavery and Free Labor: The Spanish Speaking Caribbean in the Nineteenth Century edited by Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Frank Moya Pons and Stanley L. Engerman. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 282 pp. $30 (cloth). This fascinating volume collects papers delivered by 14 leading schol- ars from the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the United States at the “Conference on Prob- lems of Transition from Slavery to Free Labor in the Caribbean” held in the Dominican Republic in 1981. Interim Report of the Joint Mission to Investigate Political Freedom in Guyana by the British Parliamentary Human Rights Group and the Ameri- cas Watch Committee. 15 pp. $2 (paper). Copies from: AWC, 36 West 44th St., New York, NY 10036. Responding to an invitation from 14 Guyanese civic, religious and political organizations, these two groups jointly endeavored to examine political freedoms in Guyana. Refused entry visas, they met with Guyanese opposition representatives in neigh- boring Trinidad. Their report con- cludes that the government does wield absolute control over Guyanese soci- ety though many of the gross human rights abuses prevalent in other coun- tries of the region are absent. Cuba: Twenty-Five Years of Revo- lution, 1959-1984 by Sandor Halebsky and John M. Kirk. Praeger, 466 pp. $16.95 (paper). This volume provides a diverse set of essays on food, education, popular culture, women, economic reform, socialism, domestic politics and for- eign policy. The essays are by noted “cuban6logos” including: Philip S. Foner, Joseph Collins, Medea Benja- min, Andre Gunder Frank, Wayne S. Smith, Margaret Randall and James Petras. The Dismantling of the Good Neigh- bor Policy by Bryce Wood. The Uni- versity of Texas Press, 290 pp. $27.50 (cloth). Under the Good Neighbor Policy (1933-1942), the United States agreed not to send armed forces to Latin America unless requested to do so, and not to in any way affect or influ- ence domestic Latin American politics or economics. The pledge came in marked contrast to the interventionist 1920s, but by 1940, the United States was already trying to reassert its dominance, and the policy’s death knell was sounded with the Guatema- lan coup of 1954. Wood’s book is an informative history of a distant school of foreign policy.
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