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Where the Boys Are

By Van Gosse ,

Book cover of Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War and the Making of a New Left

Eric Zolov Author Of The Walls of Santiago: Social Revolution and Political Aesthetics in Contemporary Chile

From my list on Latin American culture and politics in the 1960s-70s.

By Eric Zolov Author

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been fascinated by the political aesthetics and political ferment of the 1960s. As someone born in the 1960s but not of the 1960’s generation, this has allowed for a certain “critical distance” in the ways I approach this period. I'm especially fascinated by the global circulation of cultural protest forms from the 1960s, what the historian Jeremy Suri called a “language of dissent.” The term Global Sixties is now used to explore this evident simultaneity of “like responses across disparate contexts,” such as finding jipis in Chile. In our book, The Walls of Santiago, we locate various examples of what we term the “afterlives” of Global Sixties protest signage. 

Eric's book list on Latin American culture and politics in the 1960s-70s

Book cover of Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War and the Making of a New Left Book cover of Mafalda: A Social and Political History of Latin America's Global Comic Book cover of Psychedelic Chile: Youth, Counterculture, and Politics on the Road to Socialism and Dictatorship Book cover of Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America Book cover of Revolucion! Cuban Poster Art

Eric Zolov Why Eric loves this book

Among the books on this list, Gosse’s Where the Boys Are is truly a classic. I first encountered this book a few years after I finished my dissertation and found it to be one of the most original works I had ever read. I still find that to be true. Gosse (with whom I was later a colleague at Franklin & Marshall College) weaves together cultural, intellectual, political, and diplomatic history to show how the Cuban revolution inspired youth in late 1950s America and subsequently helped launch a “New Left” in the United States. Gosse reminds us of how popular Fidel Castro was across the United States in the brief period before he became Enemy #1. But his methodological approach, combining novels, films, and diplomatic records, is truly a model for later interdisciplinary scholarship as well.

Where the Boys Are

By Van Gosse ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Where the Boys Are as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The ignominious failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 marked the culmination of a curious episode at the height of the Cold War. At the end of the fifties, restless and rebellious youth, avant-garde North American intellectuals, old leftists, and even older liberals found inspiration in the images and achievements of Fidel Castro's revolutionary guerrillas. Fidelismo swept across the US, as young North Americans sought to join the 26th of July Movement in the Sierra Maestra. Drawing equally on cultural and political materials, from James Dean and Desi Arnaz to C. Wright Mills and Studies on the Left,…

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