Even to those without Marxist sympathies, Che Guevara (1928-67) was a dashing, charismatic figure: the asthmatic son of an aristocratic Argentine family whose sympathy for the world's oppressed turned him into a socialist revolutionary, the valued comrade-in-arms of Cuba's Fidel Castro and a leader of guerilla warfare in Latin America and Africa. Journalist Jon Lee Anderson's lengthy and absorbing portrait captures the complexities of international politics (revolutionary and counter); his painstaking research has unearthed a remarkable amount of new material, including information about Guevara's death at the hands of the Bolivian military.


From Library Journal
Although Ernesto "Che" Guevara was captured and killed in the mountains of Bolivia in 1967 at the age of 39, his thought and example continue to affect revolutionary movements throughout the world. Much has been written about this guerrilla fighter, ideologue, and world leader, but an adequate biography has not been available, in part because of restrictions on information imposed by the Cuban government. Assisted by Che's widow and family, journalist Anderson (Guerrillas, LJ 9/1/92) was able to interview close friends and associates of Che throughout the world, including in Russia and Cuba. Anderson also gained access to Cuban archives and documents never before consulted. He has written an important journalistic biography that is sympathetic to this influential figure. Though controversy will surround this book (as it always does when the subject is Che), this is an important volume that should be in all academic and most public libraries.?Mark L. Grover, Brigham Young Univ., ProvoCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New Yorker, Alma Guillermoprieto
Anderson's book is an epic end run around the guardians of the Che legend. A journalist who has made a career writing about wars and guerrillas, Anderson lived in Cuba for three years in order to do this project, and he persuaded Che's second wife, Aleida March, to let him read Che's private diaries. He also seems to have talked to everyone else still alive who ever knew Guevara, and one of the things that such dogged reporting has enabled him to do is to tell us, in wonderful new detail, about the hero as a youth.


The New York Times Book Review, Peter Canby
Mr. Anderson, a freelance journalist and the author of an earlier book on guerillas, spent five years on this volume--the first major biography of Che--and in it he portrays Che as a complex, volatile, ultimately tragic figure who was critical to insuring the victory of the Cuban revolution yet unable to live with the results. This book brings to light a rich collection of diaries and letters--many previously unexamined--and is especially interesting for being written from a largely Cuban perspective. Nearly three of Mr. Anderson's five years were spent in Havana, where he was able to gain access to important Cuban archives as well as to Che's famously reclusive widow, Aleida. He also conducted interviews throughout Europe and South America and on three occasions traveled to Russia, where he talked to figures who were crucial in establishing the Kremlin's policies toward Cuba and the United States.


From Booklist
Earlier this year, there was an exceptional and exciting novel, The Dancer Upstairs, about a Latin American revolutionary and his captor by reporter Nicholas Shakespeare. Soon to be published is this exceptional and exciting biography of the life and death of the larger-than-life revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentine doctor who joined with Castro to overturn Fulgencio Batista's reign in Cuba, and it is written by a reporter. Anderson broke the story about the location of Che Guevara's burial site in 1996 and now uses much of the rest of his formidable research to fill this ample history of Che, which is, as well, a significant history of the turbulent post^-World War II world of Latin America. Unlike other works about Che and that time, this one reflects information derived from the unpublished diaries controlled by Che's widow, Aleida March; from Cuban government archives that were sealed to outsiders (Cuba is celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Che and his comrades through 1997); and from current, revealing interviews of Che's closest friends and comrades. Anderson's up-close look, with beauty marks and tragic flaw so effortlessly rendered, brings the reader face to face with a man whose "unshakable faith in his beliefs was made more powerful by his unusual combination of romantic passion and a coldly analytical mind." Readers can identify with Che's concern for the poor and hungry, even if that identification is tempered in our rush to store up goods, even if giving alms to the poor is more fashionable than taking a heroic stance to elevate them. This book, with its 89 photographs, will be an invaluable addition to the literature of American revolutionaries. Bonnie Smothers


From Kirkus Reviews
A sweeping biography of the Latino revolutionary and pop-culture hero. Anderson (Guerrillas, 1992), a journalist with a longtime interest in Latin American affairs, steers clear of ideology, arguing that the Argentinian-born Guevara was both a brilliant tactician and fighter (a conclusion sure to please his admirers) and the truest representative of the old international communist agitator the State Department warned us about (a conclusion equally sure to please Guevara's detractors). Anderson writes at some length about Che's early bohemian days, spent ranging up and down the Americas on a motorcycle, looking for kicks. He goes on to persuasively establish that Guevara's connection with Fidel Castro came much earlier than the standard sources suggest. He also proves beyond doubt that Guevara was captured and executed by Bolivian counterinsurgency rangers and not killed, as the official story had it, in a firefight, automatic weapon in hand. Anderson traces the strange influence of the politics of the Argentine dictator Juan Per¢n on Guevara, analyzes the utterly disastrous mid-1960s Cuban intervention in the Congo, and considers Castro and Guevara's sometimes tense relationship. He shows that Castro did not include Guevara in the publicly visible Cuban revolutionary leadership because Castro feared that featuring an avowed Marxist would alienate his noncommunist allies. (For their part, he writes, the Soviets could never be sure whether Guevara was not truly a Maoist and held him in deep suspicion.) Drawing on a vast range of interviews and secondary sources, including little-known Latin American documents and material from the archives of the KGB, Anderson paints a portrait of Guevara as both hero and fanatic. The author's fondness for showering the reader with every detail he has uncovered makes this sprawling book sometimes tough slogging, but students of Che's life and deeds need look no farther than Anderson's volume. (16 pages photos, not seen) (First printing of 40,000; $75,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
June 1997

The cover of Jon Lee Anderson's biography Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life features a familiar image of the mythic revolutionary. Banners and newspapers across the island of Cuba are trumpeting 1997 as "the year of the 30th anniversary of the death in combat of the heroic guerrilla and his comrades." And while his popularity continues to swell, Che's name and face are increasing sales. Five new biographies, six new films, posters, T-shirts, key chains, and Fischer's Revolution Skis all flaunt his image. But the depth and volume of Jon Lee Anderson's biography redeem the diminishing effects of such widespread commercialization. Anderson digs well beneath the iconography to reveal Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the man and his immortal revolutionary spirit.

The paradigm of revolutionary appearance and behavior, Che Guevara has become better known as an icon of revolution and a champion of the oppressed than for his political activities. Anderson had unprecedented access to Che's personal archives, Cuban government files formerly sealed to outsiders, and information from the former Soviet Union; he also conducted interviews with scores of Che's closest friends. His book invites readers to explore the character of a man whose "unshakable faith in his beliefs was made more powerful by his unusual combination of romantic passion and a coldly analytical mind." Anderson's careful research takes readers from Che's Argentinean upbringing through his medical school training, from the evolution of his revolutionary fervor and his relationship with Fidel Castro tohisexecution at age 39 in Bolivia, providing an effortless rendition of a man who would spawn legends.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Combining unprecedented access to the personal archives maintained by Guevara's widow, carefully guarded Cuban government documents, and extensive interviews with both Che's comrades and the CIA men and Bolivian officers who hunted him down, this acclaimed biography stands as "an enduring achievement" ("The Boston Globe"), illuminating as never before this mythic figure who embodied the greatest moment of revolutionary communism as a force in history. 832 pp. 9-city author tour. 50,000 print.

FROM THE CRITICS

Boston Globe

An enduring achievement. It is hard to imagine that any [other biography] will match the volume and detail of the research here.

NY Times Book Review

A superb biography....Mr. Anderson does a masterly job in evoking Che's complex character, in separating the man from the myth.

Tad Szulc

Excellent...admirably honest [and] staggeringly researched...It is unlikely that after Anderson's exhaustive contribution, much more will be learned about Guevara. -- Tad Szulc, Los Angeles Times

Alma Guillermoprieto