The Sugar King of Havana: The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last Tycoon [FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING]

As new condition blue/green boards, cinnamon spine, gold front cover and spine lettering contained in an as new condition non price-clipped color photographic dust jacket. Includes Author Dedication; Introduction; Epilogue; Acknowledgments; Note on Sources; Notes; Bibliography; List of Illustrations and Index. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs and two-page map frontispiece. A remainder mark at lower page edge. "This is a riveting story that goes well beyond traditional biography. In telling the tale of Cuban sugar magnate Julio Lobo - sophisticated, complex, obsessive, a collector of Napoleon memorabilia and Hollywood starlets, as well as a ruthless businessman - Mr. Rathbone illuminates the extraordinary history of Cuba itself, and the many worlds that evaporated with the onset of Castro's revolution." - Cristina Garcia, author. ". a remarkable book.a deeply personal family memoir that clears a pathway to a part of Cuba's wounded soul. Beautifully written; a stunning achievement." - Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara. "At long last: a book that does not glorify the Cuba of the 1950s or romanticize the terrible and ineffective government that tried to erase it from memory." - Mirta Ojito, author. "This magnificntly written book is much more than an account of the life of a singular personage: it is a fascinating portrait of an era now unknown even to the Cubans themselves. Whoever wishes to know what the island was like before the revolution must read this work." - Carlos Albrto Montaner, author. "The son of a Cuban exile recounts the remarkable and contradictory life of famed sugar baron Julio Lobo, the richest man in pre-revolutionary Cuba. Fifty years after the Cuban revolution, the legendary wealth of sugar magnate Julio Lobo remains emblematic of a certain way of life that came to an abrupt end when Fidel Castro marched into Havana. Known in his day as the King of Sugar, Lobo was for decades the most powerful force in the world sugar market, controlling vast swaths of the island's sugar interests. Born in 1898, the year of Cuba's independence, he had an extraordinary life that mirrored, in almost lurid Technicolor, the many rises and final fall of the troubled Cuban Republic. The details of Lobo's life are fit for Hollywood. He twice cornered the world sugar market, and had the largest collection of Napoleonica outside of France, including the emperor's back teeth and death mask. He once faced a firing squad only to be pardoned at the last moment, and later survived a gangland shooting. He courted movie stars such as Bette Davis and Joan Fontaine, and supposedly filled the swimming pool at one of his country estates with perfume when Esther Williams came to visit. As Rathbone observes, such are the legends of which revolutions are made, and later justified. But Lobo was also a progressive and a philanthropist, and his genius was so widely acknowledged that Che Guevara personally offered him the position of Minister of Sugar in the Communist regime. When Lobo declined - knowing that their worldviews could never be compatible - his properties were nationalized, most of his fortune vanished overnight, and he fled the island, never to return. Financial Times journalist John Paul Rathbone has been fascinated by this intoxicating, whirligig, and contradictory pre-revolutionary period his entire life. Rathbone's mother was a friend of Lobo's daughters and also a member of Havana's storied haute bourgeoisie. Woven into Lobo's tale is her family's experience of republic, revolution, and exile, as well as the author's struggle to come to grips with Cuba's - and his family's - turbulent history. Prodigiously researched and imaginatively written, The Sugar King of Havana is a captivating portrait not only of the glittering end of an era but also of a more hopeful Cuban past, one that might even provide a window into the island's future." - from the inner front and rear jacket flaps.…