Miami eBook Joan Didion
Download As PDF : Miami eBook Joan Didion 
An astonishing account of Cuban exiles, CIA informants, and cocaine traffickers in Florida by the New York Times–bestselling author of South and West.
In Miami, the National Book Award–winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking looks beyond postcard images of fluorescent waters, backlit islands, and pastel architecture to explore the murkier waters of a city on the edge.
From Fidel Castro and the Bay of Pigs invasion to Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy assassination to Oliver North and the Iran–Contra affair, Joan Didion uncovers political intrigues and shadowy underworld connections, and documents the US government’s “seduction and betrayal” of the Cuban exile community in Dade County. She writes of hotels that offer “guerrilla discounts,” gun shops that advertise Father’s Day deals, and a real-estate market where “Unusual Security and Ready Access to the Ocean” are perks for wealthy homeowners looking to make a quick escape. With a booming drug trade, staggering racial and class inequities, and skyrocketing murder rates, Miami in the 1980s felt more like a Third World capital than a modern American city. Didion describes the violence, passion, and paranoia of these troubled times in arresting detail and “beautifully evocative prose” (The New York Times Book Review).
A vital report on an immigrant community traumatized by broken dreams and the cynicism of US foreign policy, Miami is a masterwork of literary journalism whose insights are timelier and more important than ever.
In Miami, the National Book Award–winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking looks beyond postcard images of fluorescent waters, backlit islands, and pastel architecture to explore the murkier waters of a city on the edge.
From Fidel Castro and the Bay of Pigs invasion to Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy assassination to Oliver North and the Iran–Contra affair, Joan Didion uncovers political intrigues and shadowy underworld connections, and documents the US government’s “seduction and betrayal” of the Cuban exile community in Dade County. She writes of hotels that offer “guerrilla discounts,” gun shops that advertise Father’s Day deals, and a real-estate market where “Unusual Security and Ready Access to the Ocean” are perks for wealthy homeowners looking to make a quick escape. With a booming drug trade, staggering racial and class inequities, and skyrocketing murder rates, Miami in the 1980s felt more like a Third World capital than a modern American city. Didion describes the violence, passion, and paranoia of these troubled times in arresting detail and “beautifully evocative prose” (The New York Times Book Review).
A vital report on an immigrant community traumatized by broken dreams and the cynicism of US foreign policy, Miami is a masterwork of literary journalism whose insights are timelier and more important than ever.
Miami eBook Joan Didion
I am one of those who absolutely love Didion's style. Her long meandering sentences, laden with subordinate clauses that wind down a long trail of adjectives and phrasings, remind me of Hunter Thompson on Sherry instead of meth, until reaching a conclusion that is at once obvious and profound. Ah, where was I?Oh yes, I was captured by Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking" after losing a loved one, and found her book to be the only one that came close to capturing the sorrow and ennui of that period of my life. I love her ideosyncratic style, and it served "Miami" well. She serves up the threats unveiled and the danger open and unguarded as she talks political assassination and murder in the same breath as Cuban literature and culture. This book captures the mundane face of the patriot in exile who will stop at nothing to regain his homeland, even when that homeland no longer effectively exists. Miami has truly become America's Casablanca, and she looks it in the eye without flinching. A political and social study that is more timely than many current tomes.
Product details
|
Tags : Miami - Kindle edition by Joan Didion. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Miami.,ebook,Joan Didion,Miami,Open Road Media
People also read other books :
- Hall of the Golden Crocodiles The Aten Sequence 2 eBook Cynthia Marsh
- Church Officers At Work Glenn H Asquith 9781258287009 Books
- The Humble Assessment Kris Saknussemm 9781621050810 Books
- The House That Got A Lump of Coal For Christmas edition by David Healey Literature Fiction eBooks
- Escape edition by Jade Falconer Literature Fiction eBooks
Miami eBook Joan Didion Reviews
i've always enjoyed Joan Didion, but after just a few pages of this book, I began to wonder "where the hell is the story?" Didion really outdoes herself in conspiracy theory without evidence. It's like a bad cocktail party at your first wife's house...you don't want to stay but the bad wine is free. And what's with, "I stopped by the coroner's office one morning?" Really, why that place? She doesn't really say. It's a waste of 2.99 plus tax for this book unless you like depressing French movies at 11 p.m. at night. Really, Joan, what the hell?
Book Club voted for this book because of all the interest in Cuba lately. Joan Didion is always a difficult read. She is brilliant and wants you to know it. Lots of multi syllable and Hispanic words, run-on sentences and convoluted double negative, sarcastic op-ed reporting. Couldn't make it through this dated book and neither did ANYONE else in the club, but we did learn some interesting Cuban history background.
I used to grab anything that Joan Didion wrote for the sheer pleasure of reading her stiletto-like prose, her sarcasm, and the intelligence of her observations. However, I guess I'm over her; perhaps I've dumbed down, or perhaps this book is just too dated (it was written in 1987, and while the more things change the more they may stay the same, a great deal HAS changed). At a minimum, I have to agree with Mr. Blanton's review in many respects; Ms. Didion is writing more for herself than for any reader, though I would add that what I used to think of as sarcasm now seems extremely holier-than-thou and so impressed with itself as to be off-putting to the max.
I also have to assume that the book is a compilation of articles that were intended to be read over time - perhaps over a long time. If that's correct, then putting them into book form does a disservice, because after a while you feel like you're reading the same thing over and over again. The sense that you're being beaten over the head with repetitious and smug observations is overwhelming and makes for a most unsatisfying read.
If you want to read the best of Joan Didion, go back to "The White Album" or "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" - though I'm not going to re-read them for fear that it really IS all over now.
Joan Didion is a truly amazing essayist. This is not her most electric work, but it is no less amazing.
The story of the Cuban exiles in Miami deserves to be told with drama and passion because that is what it has been. In this page-turner, Joan Didion captures the rejection and racism that the Cuban exiles first encountered in Miami when they emigrated from Cuba after Castro assumed power. She shows how some of the Cubans became successful businesspersons, political powerbrokers, shapers of local culture, renowned humanitarians and philanthropists, expert propagandists, able diplomats, drug runners, muggers, and internationally renowned terrorists.
We see the close relationship the Cuban exiles formed with the USA government, especially its clandestine agencies. We learn that in the 1960s Miami essentially became a CIA recruiting and operational-staging center. Didion tells us that the CIA had as much as 120,000 "regular agents" (full and part-time) stationed in south Florida. It had a flotilla of small boats (often used for terrorist raids on Cuba), making it the third largest navy in the western hemisphere at the time. It owned airline companies in the Miami area and holding companies that lent itself loans for covert operations. "There were [also] hundreds of pieces of Miami real estate, residential bungalows maintained as safe houses, waterfront properties maintained as safe harbors" as well as "fifty five other front businesses" and "CIA boat shops," "guns shops," real-estate, travel and detective agencies (pp. 90-91).
Yet the relationship between the Cuban Americans and the USA has been a troubled one. Although the Cuban Americans find themselves dependent on the USA for maintaining their struggle against Castro, they also don't trust the government, blaming it for their loss at the Bay of Pigs and for adopting policies soft on Castro. Likewise, the USA finds some Cuban Americans helpful in its secret foreign adventures (Chile, Nicaragua, Angola, etc.) as well as a nuisance when these terrorist elements assassinate foreign diplomats, blow up airplanes and banks, and murder USA citizens.
Particularly poignant is Didion's description of the Cuban Americans' personal and often internecine struggle over understanding themselves as immigrants or exiles. These struggles have resulted in broken friendships, shunning, public ridicule, financial loss, bodily harm and death.
The book only covers Miami until 1987. I wish Didion would update the book, although it might be dangerous for her to do so.
This is a great read and well worth the purchase.
This is an essential book about Miami in the 70's and the 80's. It explores all the implication that the influx of Cuban nationals had on the tip of Florida, the drug trade, the economic boom and later the rise in crime. This books doesn't sugar coat anything, and after reading it, you actually feel that you know too much and your life is in danger. It portrays a compendium of news, since Didion was a journalist, and you are basically getting unbiased information. Great book and a must read to those interested in Miami, Florida, or interested in Cuban politics.
I am one of those who absolutely love Didion's style. Her long meandering sentences, laden with subordinate clauses that wind down a long trail of adjectives and phrasings, remind me of Hunter Thompson on Sherry instead of meth, until reaching a conclusion that is at once obvious and profound. Ah, where was I?
Oh yes, I was captured by Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking" after losing a loved one, and found her book to be the only one that came close to capturing the sorrow and ennui of that period of my life. I love her ideosyncratic style, and it served "Miami" well. She serves up the threats unveiled and the danger open and unguarded as she talks political assassination and murder in the same breath as Cuban literature and culture. This book captures the mundane face of the patriot in exile who will stop at nothing to regain his homeland, even when that homeland no longer effectively exists. Miami has truly become America's Casablanca, and she looks it in the eye without flinching. A political and social study that is more timely than many current tomes.
0 Response to "⋙ PDF Gratis Miami eBook Joan Didion"
Post a Comment