To the 70 million poor of Brazil, dreaming and planning for Carnival is an upside down ritual for exorcising their pain--a brilliant cultural and sexual release in which sequins are brighter than diamonds; prostitutes and pimps are queens and kings, and dancing skill is more prized than power.

SAMBA.

Humor & Entertainment

Guillermoprieto, Alma.

Puzzles & Games

CAPE.

A vivid and mesmerizing memoir of the six months the author spent in Cuba in 1970, a time when she began to develop her own fervent political conscience. Alma Guillermoprieto—an award–winning journalist and arguably our most clear-eyed observer of Latin America—now turns her keen powers of observation onto her own, younger self. In this richly evocative chronicle, Guillermoprieto describes the remarkable, transforming journey she made as a twenty-year-old, when her love of dance—which had led her from her native Mexico to the New York dance studios of Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Twyla Tharp—took her to a job teaching poorly trained but ardent dance students in Cuba. At first unaffected by the revolutionary spirit and the adoration of Castro that pervaded the island, Guillermoprieto slowly fell under the spell of the idealism that buoyed the often destitute lives of the Cuban people. And as she opened herself to what became a complex, galvanizing revolutionary experience, she found, as well, the ideas and ideals that would shape her thinking for the rest of her life. Beautifully written and deeply felt, Dancing with Cuba is a revelatory account of the making of an impassioned political heart and mind.

Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Pantheon

Since Alma Guillermoprieto became The New Yorker's Latin American correspondent a decade ago, she has emerged as the most informed and admired writer on her part of the world. In these superb pieces of reportage and analysis she anatomizes a region we are intimately linked with yet sadly ignorant of. She writes in depth about three countries that are in deep difficulty: Cuba, to which she returned after many years—a place in an exhausting holding pattern, waiting for Castro's departure yet anxious about what may replace him. Colombia, in which she has spent several years and which is fatally splintered among the government, the left-wing guerrillas who control large sections of the country, thanks in part to money from the drug trade, and the right-wing paramilitaries. Mexico, where she lives, which is beset by the uprising in Chiapas (where she encounters the legendary masked leader, Marcos) and by the corruption of the government, yet emerging for the first time into some kind of real democracy. Finally, she gives us the stories of Eva Perón—and so of Argentina; Che Guevara—and so of the aborted Marxist revolution in Latin America; and Mario Vargas Llosa, the great Peruvian novelist who in 1990 lost the battle for the presidency to Alberto Fujimori. Looking for History is personal reportage that is infused with the author's unique understanding of a world that she is a part of, but that she can also stand apart from and sympathetically observe.

Looking for History: Dispatches from Latin America

History

Americas

In 1970 a young dancer named Alma Guillermoprieto left New York to take a job teaching at Cuba’s National School of Dance. For six months, she worked in mirrorless studios (it was considered more revolutionary); her poorly trained but ardent students worked without them but dreamt of greatness. Yet in the midst of chronic shortages and revolutionary upheaval, Guillermoprieto found in Cuba a people whose sense of purpose touched her forever. In this electrifying memoir, Guillermoprieto–now an award-winning journalist and arguably one of our finest writers on Latin America– resurrects a time when dancers and revolutionaries seemed to occupy the same historical stage and even a floor exercise could be a profoundly political act. Exuberant and elegiac, tender and unsparing, Dancing with Cuba is a triumph of memory and feeling.

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

From theesteemed New Yorker correspondent comes an incisive volume of essays and reportage that vividly illuminates Latin America’s recent history. Only Alma Guillermoprieto, the most highly regarded writer on the region, could unravel the complex threads of Colombia’s cocaine wars or assess the combination of despotism, charm, and political jiu-jitsu that has kept Fidel Castro in power for more than 40 years. And no one else can write with such acumen and sympathy about statesmen and campesinos, leftist revolutionaries and right-wing militias, and political figures from Evita Peron to Mexico’s irrepressible president, Vicente Fox. Whether she is following the historic papal visit to Havana or staying awake for a pre-dawn interview with an insomniac Subcomandante Marcos, Guillermoprieto displays both the passion and knowledge of an insider and the perspective of a seasoned analyst. Looking for History is journalism in the finest traditions of Joan Didion, V. S. Naipaul, and Ryszard Kapucinski: observant, empathetic, and beautifully written.

For one year, Alma Guillermoprieto lived in Manguiera, a village near Rio de Janeiro, to learn the ritual of samba--the sensuous song and dance marked by a rapturous beat--and to take part in Rio's renowned carnivale parade. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Samba: The Making of Brazilian Carnival

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

KNOPF

An extraordinarily vivid, unflinching series of portraits of South America today, written from the inside out, by the award-winning New Yorker journalist and widely admired author of Samba. From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Heart That Bleeds: Latin America Now

Literature & Fiction

Essays & Correspondence

For one year, Alma Guillermoprieto lived in Manguiera, a village near Rio de Janeiro, to learn the ritual of samba--the sensuous song and dance marked by a rapturous beat--and to take part in Rio's renowned carnivale parade.

Samba

An extraordinarily vivid, unflinching series of portraits of South America today, written from the inside out, by the award-winning New Yorker journalist and widely admired author of Samba.

BLOOMSBURY

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Guillermoprieto, Alma.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Guillermoprieto, Alma.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Guillermoprieto, Alma.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

SAMBA.

Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution

Looking for History: Dispatches from Latin America

Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution

Looking for History: Dispatches from Latin America

Samba: The Making of Brazilian Carnival

The Heart That Bleeds: Latin America Now

Samba

The Heart That Bleeds: Latin America Now

Samba