Silvia Pedraza is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Political and Economic Migrants in America: Cubans and Mexicans (1985) and the co-editor of Origins and Destinies: Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in America (1996, with Ruben G. Rumbaut). She has also published articles in such journals as Social Science History and the Annual Review of Sociology. A child of the Cuban refugee exodus, she lived through both a dictatorship and a revolution, which left an indelible mark on her research.

• 1. Political disaffection: Cuba's revolution and exodus; Part I. For and Against the Republic, For and Against the Revolution: the Cuban Exodus of 1959–1962 and 1965–1974: 2. The revolution defines itself: democracy; humanism; 3. The revolution deepens: nationalism, church vs. state; 4. The revolution redefines itself: socialism, Marxism-Leninism; 5. The revolution consolidated: old vs. new communists; political prisoners; the dialogue; Part II. The Children of Communism: the Cuban Exodus of 1980 and 1985–2004: 6. Los Marielitos of 1980: race, class, gender, and sexuality; 7. After the Soviet collapse: the Balsero crisis; 8. The last wave: political or economic immigrants?; Part III. Civil Society Returns: 9. The church and the rebirth of civil society; 10. Democratization and migration: the exodus and the development of civil society; 11. The impossible triangle: Cuba, the United States, and the exiles.

'Pedraza's study is unique … an excellent and important contribution to the still-too-limited literature on Cuba's 1959 Revolution … the contributions offered by Pedraza's volume are more important than ever.' The Review of Politics