For the millions of Americans who have only ( until recently ie since the Pope's visit to Cuba ) seen Fidel as a military man this book adds a bit of humanity to that image. The imae of him as a threat to my safety is a view I could only suspect was being presented me as my government's own bit of propaganda (thinking of how recent publication's on how the Soviets used photography as a tool to control the masses) I was genuinely pleased to have my suspicions confirmed.

Nonetheless, upon opening this book, one finds that it is more than meets the eye. It is not the political treatise one might expect. I am grateful for the honesty the son (Roberto) gave in the acknowledging the irony in being both a suporter of the cause as well as a photographer/reporter of history.

Of particular interest, which I think self taught photographers may find of interest, is the many anecdotes on how Roberto and his father "made do" with what little equipment they had (both before going to Cuba and after) and how they shared equipment. Such disclosures dispell the popular belief that an aspiring photographers needs all the latest gadgetry that manufacturers pump out. The kind of "socialism they [Cubana] fought for is the kind struggling artist could practice.

From a political perspective. The book (story) of how the U.S. Government ousts individuals be they journalist or subversives is touched on. This is a book that may touch the heart and the soul of a anyone who suspects Cuba and Castro have stories to tell. Finally, it is a photographic feast of photojournalism from the inside of not only the revolution but the photographers who documented it.

Apart from the amazing photography, which captures an epoch so freqently only seen through CIA-filtered eyes, the book is a simple overview of the Cuban revolution and the real people of Cuba - not just the materialistic bourgouisie - who supported Castro and still do. Most enigmatic of all are the photos of Castro and Che, and then just Che, his magnetism shining through regardless of his beliefs.

Set your politics aside. Look at this wonderful book and ponder how close Fidel and Che came to actually getting it right.

Soon Castro may be judged by history, as he once claimed he wanted to be, and the facts point in the direction of a dark, blood-stained judgement. Nonetheless, the photography in this book is a brilliant work of photojournalist art.

They take us from the tender beginnings of a Revolution of bearded young men against a bloody tyrant. They are young gods in olive-green uniforms. The photo of Camilo Cienfuegos and another unidentified bearded guerrilla in front of the Lincoln statue in the Lincoln Memorial in DC is magnificent. What did America think of these young white men, in their dark, long hair and their huge beards? It stunned and seduced the nation and the seeds of the hippie movement were planted.

The book delivers with visual insight and power. The photographs are vivid and full of history. My highest possible rating!

Jon Lee Anderson's biography of Ernesto (Che) Guevara is one of the best biographies I have ever read, and it definitely belongs on the shortlist of the best biographies ever written. It is thorough, accessible and written in a remarkably unbiased fashion. This biography seems to have it all. Virtually everything you want to know about Che is covered in this biography. Not only does the book give you Che's life in detail, it also gives you a fair bit of history, and a study of politics in action.

Che was a handsome, adventurous, highly intelligent, and an influential figure. He was the oldest son of an aristocratic Argentine family. He was also one of the most complex public figures of Latin America.

This biography is complete from the birth of Che in 1926, his upbringing in upper-class Argentina, his youth which spent in the highlands due to his severe asthmatic condition, including his schooling and medical training, his (early) spirit for adventure, his unusual close relationship with his mother, his meeting with Castro in Mexico, and of course his well-known participation in the defeat of the Batista government in Cuba and the event that followed, which finally would lead to his death in Bolivia.

The author conducted a comprehensive research to reveal Che, the man and the myth, and the events in Che's life that formed him to be the socialist revolutionary that he became. Anderson's biography is really a look on the inside of Che's head, merely due to the fact that much of the author's research is based on Che's own letters to his family and his private diaries. Even better, Che's second wife, Aleida March also cooperated with Mr. Anderson, giving him access to information about Che and also to some of his writings, granting us an even closer and more private look into our hero's (private) life. This book is nearly 800 pages long, and no easy read. Nevertheless, it is worth all the time you invest reading it. Anderson has not only done a thorough research, but I believe that with his unlimited access to sources close to Che, he has clarified inaccuracies and errors in preceding writings about Che.

Whether you agree with his politics or not, Che is revealed as a man with a purpose and a vision, who cared profoundly and sacrificed everything for the cause he believed in. His main motive was to improve the condition of the poor people of the world; to stop Western (read: capitalism and the US) from exploiting the Latin American people and its recourses. Che's remarkable persistence and single mindedness, were valuable personal traits to have in the beginning of the Guerilla Warfare. But the same traits made it presumably impossible for Che to re-group and change, as the world changed, Communism started declining, and Glasnost became everyone's favorite word. It is tempting to compare Malcolm X and Che Guevara as they both were (in their own way) fighting for the same cause. Che lacked one thing that Malcolm X had; the ability to change view when realizing that he had been mistaken in his beliefs and views of the world.

The book didn't convert me from democrat to communist, but it gave me a greater understanding as to the other side of the argument. Even if you find the methods of the guerilla group awful and sickening, it's hard not to respect Che's courage. In the end, I came away with a feeling of mercy for this strong and passionate man who gave so much of himself, his life included, for the beliefs he held to be true, beliefs which he never wavered from.

To be honest, prior to my trip to Latin America in 1999 I knew very little of Che. I am too young (I was born the same year he was killed) to have had Guevara as anything but a handsome "cultural icon". As a teenager, I kept his poster on the same wall where I had my James Dean and Abba posters.. But during the year I spent trekking around in Latin America, studying Spanish, my curiosity was definitively aroused. Upon returning home, this biography was one of the first books that I bought. Funny enough, while in Latin America I visited all the places mentioned in the book except for Bolivia. We even got to be in Cuba on the 8th of October, the day Fidel & Co celebrates Che. It was absolutely amazing to see hundreds of thousands of people parading on the Molocon. (I don't necessarily think you have to have spent time in Cuba or Latin America to enjoy this book, but it definitively helped me capture much of this story's "subtleties").

This book also contains some excellent photos. I love the one of the young Che, relaxing on the balcony, and also his self-portrait of his undercover identity as an old man on his way to Bolivia (Excellent disguise! Even his kids did not recognize him!). If I can have one picture removed it would be the picture of the dead Che "laying on display". We don't really need to see that photo.

This must be the best book yet written about Che and it should be considered compulsory read for everyone. Very highly recommended!

Anderson's biography of Che Guevara is an impressive accomplishment, and an absorbing read. Having grown up a bit too late to have been aware of Guevara as a contemporary figure, I'm of the generation that inherited him as a cultural icon: quite literally, a "poster boy" for anti-imperialist revolutionaries. The thoroughness of Anderson's research is staggering, and he effectively synthesizes and organizes a huge volume of information. His unprecedented access to people like Castro, Guevara's two wives and other family members, and those who fought alongside him in the Cuban revolution and his expeditions to the Congo and Bolivia provide a plethora of fascinating, and enlightening, detail. Anderson also maintains a very objective, journalistic perspective, avoiding both naive hagiography and knee-jerk demonizing, allowing him to present a fully-developed portrait of a real person who found himself at the center of amazing historical developments. I agree with an earlier reviewer that the text could benefit from some tighter line-editing; Anderson will sometimes use the exact same phrases or descriptions several times within a paragraph. But the writing on the whole is lucid and engaging, and the book both an engrossing character study and thoughtful depiction of the political and social developments in which Guevara's character and legend were formed.

This is a great story; it borders on the epic. Anderson got access to seemingly thousands of sources in the U.S. and Latin America and the result is a fascinating and gripping account of Che Guevara's life. Virtually everything you'd want to know about Che is in this book, which has to rank as the authoritative work on the man.

Anderson does an excellent job of laying out the historical setting, which frames Che's life. He recounts the U.S.'s imperial behavior toward Latin America, including directing the overthrow of the government of Guatemala and other misdeeds, which radicalize Che and sets him on the road to destiny. Anderson convincingly describes Che's complex personality, but emphasizes his single-minded devotion to improving the condition of the poor and bedraggled of the world. One can't help but respect, grudgingly or otherwise, someone (with chronic asthma no less) who willingly gives up whatever creature comforts he has in order to fight in the African and Latin American countrysides for such an ideal. Many of course scoff becuase Guevara was a dedicated Marxist, but all things considered, he consistently comports himself better than his enemies, particularly in combat. For example, he routinly frees captured enemy soldiers, while his opponents shot their prisoners. Granted, Guevara presided over executions in Cuba, but they pale in comparison to the behavior of the pro-U.S. regimes in Guatemala and elsewhere. And of course Che himself is executed in the end by his Bolivian and CIA captors.

This book also contains some great photos. I particularly liked those of Che disguised as an elderly professor, his cover for his ill-fated mission to Bolivia.

To be sure, there are some flaws in the book. For one thing, Anderson surprisingly does not fully discuss Che's conversion to Marxism. Just a few more paragrahs on this key question probably would've sufficed. Also, on a couple of occasions Anderson uses the same phrases in the same paragraph; tighter editing would've eliminated this. Still, these are minor defects. All things considered, this is a great bio. I don't know if Anderson won any awards for this book, but he certainly deserves recognition of some sort.

In this book, John Lee Anderson provides a fairly insightful and educational narrative of his experiences inside Afghanistan after the 9-11 attacks. In it, you read of his encounters with various people inside Afghanistan, some colorful and tragic, others brutal and dangerous. The book serves as a nice backdrop of Afghanistan during the US war there, and the immediate consequences of it. However, it suffers from a few flaws that kept this from being a really good book.

The book is titled the Lions Grave as a reference to the grave of one of the most tragic figures in Afghanistan, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Lion of the Panjshir. Several of the articles reference him, and his presence is felt almost constantly throughout the book, as it is in Afghanistan. Massoud was the charismatic leader of the Northern Alliance, the hodgepodge group of fighters opposing the Taliban. Just two days before the 9-11 attacks, two men sent by Osama Bin Laden managed to kill Massoud by dressing like reporters. This was in order to fracture the delicate alliance, to hamper any assault on the Taliban. Anderson points out how the man has become an almost religious figure, worshipped by millions of Afghanis. Anderson gives us a cursory look at the politics of the alliance, highlighting their disagreements and past atrocities. All throughout the book, you get a sense of the total devastation of the country, which has really fallen into the dark ages. I was surprised at how dangerous it was for the reporters sent to Afghanistan, as the countryside and the roads were patrolled regularly by all sorts of heavily armed brigands. One other interesting theme of the book was the educated class of Afghanistan that we usually do not hear about. It may come as a surprise to many readers, but Afghanistan was once a pretty civilized country. The remnants of this era survive in little hamlets of professional and academic men and women, desperate for a way out of the constant turmoil. I found that the most tragic part of the book.

There are a few reasons I did not really love this book. First, it is way too short and barely scratches the surface of the situation. Now I know this was not meant to be an in depth look at Afghanistan, this is just Anderson's story. Still, I felt like a lot more commentary was needed at certain parts, where themes are broached but never examined. Also, the book is full of interludes of real emails Anderson was sending back to his editors. At first, this is a clever and exciting way to track his movements on a day by day basis, but eventually it becomes tedious.

An average reporters book.

This is a very readable account of post-9/11 Afghanistan, and I finished it in the course of one day. I did notice, however, after reading this book and his current dispatches from Iraq, that the US itself is sort of an unseen factor in all of his work, implicit in the goings-on but not directly reported on. For example, during his time with the Northern Alliance, there is one description of a B-52 strafing a hillside and that is our one explicit clue that a massive campaign is occuring. Instead, we are graced with very intricate and impressive first-hand accounts of internal Afghani struggles, specifically concerning the assassination of Massoud. I think that Anderson's very noble intention is to prevent Afghanistan (and subsequently, Iraq) from becoming an abstract idea for Americans, by supplying readers here with details about life under siege. I would've enjoyed a bit more specific information about American operations and strategy, but I was not disappointed at all with what was provided in Anderson's account.

Full disclosure: While I do think Lion's Grave is a tremendous book, and provides a unique insight into the way journalists cover zones, I should also point out that I'm Jon Lee Anderson's younger brother. Rather than trying to pad his numbers, however, my main motive for writing is in amusement over Hilliard's comment that it seemed a bit Rambo-esque (i.e. unbelievable) that Jon Lee would give a tongue-lashing to a group of heavily-armed 20 year olds. After having traveled through five war zones with Jon Lee over the years, I can assure you that this is exactly the sort of thing he does do! Ill-advised, perhaps, but not hubris - and certainly not Ramboesque.