1959年にフィデル・カストロ（1926-2016年）がキューバで政権をとって以来、米国人はフロリダ・キーズの南90マイルにあるこの社会主義共和国に執着してきました。キューバ人は今やフロリダの主要な民族となっていて、地域における亡命者コミュニティは選挙にも影響を及ぼすほどの存在となっています。
果たして小さな島国、キューバ共和国とはどのような国なのでしょうか。内政や国際社会との関係の変化などについて簡潔な概要を提供する本書は、まず米西戦争以降のキューバの歴史を振り返ります。それを踏まえて世界情勢におけるキューバの位置づけと、社会的・政治的変化に等しく目を向け、カストロ以前、1959年の革命とソビエト連邦崩壊まで、冷戦後、そしてカストロ後、と時代を追って説明しています。
この改訂第3版は序文を一新し、オバマ大統領とラウル・カストロが米国とキューバの国交正常化を発表し、正式な外交関係を回復してからの動きについて言及するほか、国交正常化の経緯やローマ法王フランシスコのキューバ訪問（フィデル、ラウル・カストロ両氏との会談）について、最終章に新たな解説を加えています。
    

• Cuba is a perennially topical issue in the U.S., and this up-to-date, accessible account of the subject will put it all together for general readers
• Focuses on hot-button current events while also connecting all the dots for readers by pairing the discussion of contemporary events with a deeply informed historical explanation of how Cuba became what it is today
• Written by the go-to person on Cuba and Latin America for the national media

New to this Edition:

• Features a new foreword that discusses developments since Obama and Raul Castro announced normalization of US-Cuba relations and restored formal diplomatic ties
• A new final chapter covers Pope Francis' visit to Cuba and meeting with Fidel and Raul Castro
• Previous chapters are fully updated to reflect the most recent data available

      
Ever since Fidel Castro assumed power in Cuba in 1959, Americans have obsessed about the nation ninety miles south of the Florida Keys. America's fixation on the tropical socialist republic has only grown over the years, fueled in part by successive waves of Cuban immigration and Castro's larger-than-life persona. Cubans are now a major ethnic group in Florida, and the exile community is so powerful that every American president has curried favor with it. But what do most Americans really know about Cuba itself? 

In this third edition of the widely hailed Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know®, Julia Sweig updates her concise and remarkably accessible portrait of the small island nation. This edition contains a new foreword that discusses developments since Obama and Raul Castro announced the normalization of US-Cuba relations and restored formal diplomatic ties. A new final chapter discusses how normalization came to pass and covers Pope Francis' visit to Cuba, where he met with Fidel and Raul Castro. Expansive in coverage and authoritative in scope, the book looks back over Cuba's history since the Spanish American War before shifting to recent times. Focusing equally on Cuba's role in world affairs and its own social and political transformations, Sweig divides the book chronologically into the pre-Fidel era, the period between the 1959 revolution and the fall of the Soviet Union, the post-Cold War era, and — finally — the post-Fidel era. 

Informative, pithy, and lucidly written, it is the best compact reference on Cuba's internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.