David Margolick writes:

Given that Cuba has been hermetically sealed off from most Americans for five decades – thanks largely to embittered and politically potent Cuban émigrés in Florida, it’s been accessible only to journalists and study groups; few others even attempt to evade the absurd restrictions – it’s easy to forget that Cuba is only ninety miles from the United States. That proximity used to make it a tempting destination for American mobsters, who sought to take advantage of the island’s lawlessness and endemic corruption. As early as the Prohibition era of the 1920s, when it was a key transit point for rum-running, the mobster Meyer Lansky saw Cuba’s potential: by catering to Americans eager to gamble and have a good time, organised crime could reap enormous profits – provided that it split the take with the right local officials. The Depression, then the Second World War, delayed Lansky’s grand plans, but he never abandoned them. As he later recalled: ‘I couldn’t get that little island out of my mind.’

(LRB 20 March 2008)

Mainstream | hardback 400 pp. |ISBN: 9781845961923