Review of Radical Political Economics Vol. 27(3)111- 128(1995) BOOK REVIEWS Fidel! Castro's Political and Social Thought. Sheldon B. Liss. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994. xv + 246pp. $60 (hard back) , $18.95 (paperback). Reviewed by Bill MAURER Stanford University Sheldon Liss has done his readers the service of providing a synthesis of the speeches and writings of Fidel Castro. The result is an excellent resource for information about Castro's positions on a number of issues, from theoretical debates within Marxism to foreign policy and economic development to the role of sport and popular culture in forging revolutionary consciousness. The book will be useful for scholars of Latin American social thought and for undergraduate-and graduate-level classes on Latin America, the Caribbean and contemporary Marxisms. The book contains nine chapters and a preface outlining its rationale. Rather than assessing the Revolution or providing an exegesis of Fidel's thought, Liss sets out to convey the Cuban leader's ideas in their own terms. For instance, Liss writes that he is more interested in what Fidel has to say about the role of women in the Revolution than in appraising the gains they have made in Cuba over the past three decades (xii). The result can be frustrating at times; readers interested in the background context to Castro's positions will not find it here. Endnotes direct the reader not to secondary or historical sources but to Castro's own speeches and writings. This ethnographer wanted to hear more about Cuban people's assessments of revolution. But as Liss writes, such is not the task of this book. As an explication of the development of Castro's thought, the book provides fascinating insight into the theory and praxis of revolution. As an account of a body of theory directed to radical action, the book poses important challenges to bourgeois social thought. © 1995 Union for Radical Political Economics. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 238 Main St. , Cambridge, MA 02142, USA, and 108 Cowley Rd ., Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK.