Will I love Che Guevara?

I love it as a tale of heroism, youthful idealism, success, defeat, death over and over. I first read the final chapter of this book in an excerpt after which I ordered it immediately. I had been curious about the real story behind this highly intelligent icon. Disturbing and illuminating, this book shows how driven, outright murderous in the name of revolution, Che was and how this catapulted Fidel and the Cuban revolutionaries to victory over Fulgencio Batista. I had such empathy for Che as I read through his life that I couldn’t reread the final chapter about his brutal… show more.

A young Argentine doctor who had traveled to Guatemala to support the Árbenz reforms fled to Mexico after the coup. His name was Ernesto “Che” Guevara. In Mexico City he befriended two Cuban dissidents, Fidel and Raúl Castro. This book got me wondering: Did witnessing the coup in Guatemala drive Che toward the Marxist zealotry he later espoused? In other words, did the CIA help create its own most-wanted enemy in Latin America? Anderson’s splendid biography traces Che’s ideological development from his youthful travels in South America to his final, desperate days when a U.S.-coordinated manhunt tracked him down and… show more.