Winds of Change

“Louis Pérez Jr. leaves us in no doubt of the power of great hurricanes to change the course of the past in economic, political and social ways. . . . [An] elegant discourse on the powerful role of hurricanes in Cuban history.” — Los Angeles Times

“A short but elegant discourse on the powerful role of hurricanes in Cuban history.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Pérez Jr. makes valuable contribution to the small but growing number of Latin American case studies in the field of environmental history.” — Journal of American History

“In Pérez’s new book . . . the major hurricanes of the 1840s are historical actors. . . . Responding to hurricanes as a shared experience shaped how Cubans would 'negotiate adversity of all types.'” — Chronicle of Higher Education

“The strength of Pérez’s analysis rests with his insightful examination of how hurricanes affected each sector of Cuban society in different ways. . . . He judiciously makes a strong and innovative case for how environmental history can provide new insights into well-covered topics in Cuban history.” — Latin American Research Review

“[Pérez] regales us with a study that inscribes itself in the growing body of revisionist Latin American and Caribbean historiography which . . . refocus[es] our approach to the region’s past. . . . Pérez deftly assembles both the extent of the devastation and responses to the disruption and disarray that, he argues, provide clues to the broader Cuban psyche in negotiating adversity.” — Journal of Latin American Studies

“An original, interesting, and engaging work that should be read by those dedicated to the study of Cuba and its people, as well as by anyone who is interested in understanding the deep bonds between human beings and nature.” — Colonial Latin American Historical Review

“An enthralling historiography of how powerlessness (peasants, slaves, common folks) and power (the Spanish colonial authorities) reached compromise in preparing for tropical storms, surviving them, and rebuilding in the wake of the storms. . . . Louis A Pérez has provided us with a fascinating and highly readable account of this important geographic story.” — Historical Geography

“A masterful story of three hurricanes — in 1842, 1844, and 1846 — and their impacts on the historical evolution of Cuba. . . . A reminder that disasters occur in socioeconomic and political contexts, not in vacuums, and it is a powerful antidote to ever again thinking of disasters as isolated events. . . . In this era of increasing attention to extreme events as turning points in national histories, this book needs to be read and reflected upon.” — Cuban Studies

“[This] work is carefully constructed not to show the single causal force of hurricanes in 'the Transformation of Nineteenth-Century Cuba,' but rather, how environmental history can shed new historigraphical light on well-covered topics such as agriculture, slavery, population growth, urbanism and colonialism.” — Caribbean Studies