Audiobook8 hours
The Sugar King of Havana: The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last Tycoon
Written by John Paul Rathbone
Narrated by Simon Vance
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this audiobook
Fifty years after the Cuban revolution, the legendary wealth of the sugar magnate Julio Lobo remains emblematic of a certain way of life that came to an abrupt end when Fidel Castro marched into Havana. Known in his day as the King of Sugar, Lobo was for decades the most powerful force in the world sugar market, controlling vast swaths of the island's sugar interests. Born in 1898, the year of Cuba's independence, Lobo's extraordinary life mirrors, in almost lurid technicolor, the many rises and final fall of the troubled Cuban republic.
The details of Lobo's life are fit for Hollywood. He twice cornered the international sugar market and had the largest collection of Napoleonica outside of France, including the emperor's back teeth and death mask. He once faced a firing squad only to be pardoned at the last moment, and he later survived a gangland shooting. He courted movie stars from Bette Davis to Joan Fontaine and filled the swimming pool at his sprawling estate with perfume when Esther Williams came to visit.
As Rathbone observes, such are the legends of which revolutions are made and later justified. But Lobo was also a progressive and a philanthropist, and his genius was so widely acknowledged that Che Guevara personally offered him the position of minister of sugar in the Communist regime. When Lobo declined-knowing that their worldviews could never be compatible-his properties were nationalized, most of his fortune vanished overnight, and he left the island, never to return to his beloved Cuba.
Financial Times journalist John Paul Rathbone has been fascinated by this intoxicating, whirligig, and contradictory prerevolutionary period his entire life. His mother was also a member of Havana's storied haute bourgeoisie and a friend of Lobo's daughters. Woven into Lobo's tale is her family's experience of republic, revolution, and exile, as well as the author's own struggle to come to grips with Cuba's-and his family's-turbulent history.
Prodigiously researched and imaginatively written, The Sugar King of Havana is a captivating portrait of the glittering end of an era, but also of a more hopeful Cuban past, one that might even provide a window into the island's future.
The details of Lobo's life are fit for Hollywood. He twice cornered the international sugar market and had the largest collection of Napoleonica outside of France, including the emperor's back teeth and death mask. He once faced a firing squad only to be pardoned at the last moment, and he later survived a gangland shooting. He courted movie stars from Bette Davis to Joan Fontaine and filled the swimming pool at his sprawling estate with perfume when Esther Williams came to visit.
As Rathbone observes, such are the legends of which revolutions are made and later justified. But Lobo was also a progressive and a philanthropist, and his genius was so widely acknowledged that Che Guevara personally offered him the position of minister of sugar in the Communist regime. When Lobo declined-knowing that their worldviews could never be compatible-his properties were nationalized, most of his fortune vanished overnight, and he left the island, never to return to his beloved Cuba.
Financial Times journalist John Paul Rathbone has been fascinated by this intoxicating, whirligig, and contradictory prerevolutionary period his entire life. His mother was also a member of Havana's storied haute bourgeoisie and a friend of Lobo's daughters. Woven into Lobo's tale is her family's experience of republic, revolution, and exile, as well as the author's own struggle to come to grips with Cuba's-and his family's-turbulent history.
Prodigiously researched and imaginatively written, The Sugar King of Havana is a captivating portrait of the glittering end of an era, but also of a more hopeful Cuban past, one that might even provide a window into the island's future.
Related to The Sugar King of Havana
Related audiobooks
Water to the Angels: William Mulholland, His Monumental Aqueduct, and the Rise of Los Angeles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba...and Then Lost It to the Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cuba on the Verge: 12 Writers on Continuity and Change in Havana and Across the Country Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Corporation: An Epic Story of the Cuban American Underworld Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Iterating Grace: Heartfelt Wisdom and Disruptive Truths from Silicon Valley's Top Venture Capitalists Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World's Great Family Businesses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Full Cup: Sir Thomas Lipton's Extraordinary Life and His Quest for the America's Cup Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Sucker Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Liar's Ball: The Extraordinary Saga of How One Building Broke the World's Toughest Tycoons Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle over the Greatest Fortune in the American West Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera: An Insider's History of the Florida-Alabama Coast Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fish that Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Too Good to Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5New York, New York, New York: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Snowblind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crazy Rich: Power, Scandal, and Tragedy Inside the Johnson & Johnson Dynasty Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
History For You
The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/577 Days of February: Living and Dying in Ukraine, Told by the Nation’s Own Journalists Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Swingtime for Hitler: Goebbels’s Jazzmen, Tokyo Rose, and Propaganda That Carries a Tune Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Demon Copperhead: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Small Mercies: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An American Marriage: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Secret History of the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Razorblade Tears: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mary Magdalene: Women, the Church, and the Great Deception Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lafayette in the Somewhat United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Korean War: A History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Five Rings Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for The Sugar King of Havana
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The author of this book (a distant relative of my husband) is the son of a British father and a Cuban mother and, after listening to his mother's wistful stories about Cuba in the pre-Castro days, developed his own nostalgia for the island despite never having been there. His mother was friends with the youngest daughter of Julio Lobo, the "Sugar King of Havana" who at one time controlled the trade in sugar from Cuba and became one of the richest men in that country.The book tells of Lobo's rise from his childhood at the time of the Spanish-American War through his the building of his empire in the 1930's and 1940's to the inevitable fall after FIdel Castro came to power in 1959. Along the way he paints a vivid portrait of a country and a way of life that is long gone and now only seen in history books and depictions in the movies.At times, the book got way too detailed about the machinations of Lobo's speculative deals, but Rathbone's vivid portrait of Cuba in the "old days" more than made up for that failing.