In this wildly entertaining and meticulously researched account, Tony Perrottet unravels the human drama behind history's most improbable revolution: a scruffy handful of self-taught revolutionaries - many of them kids just out of college, literature majors, art students and young lawyers, and including a number of women - defeated 40,000 professional soldiers to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Cuba Libre is an entertaining look back at a liberation movement that captured the imagination of the world with its spectacular drama - and that set the stage for a build-up of Cold War tension that became a pivotal moment in history.