“Julie Marie Bunck provides us with an overdue, critical accounting of more than three decades of failed, costly social experimentation by the Castro regime. She shows why the regime failed in the pursuit of its elusive goals of achieving radical cultural change because of the resiliency of traditional Cuban culture and mores. She documents how the regime was obliged to alter its policies by moving from moral to material incentives, and by increasing its totalitarian controls over society.”—Edward Gonzalez, University of California, Los Angeles