Works of History
- The Fall of Che Guevara
- The Vision of Anglo-America
- The Complete Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara and other Captured Documents (Introduction)
- Che Guevara: A Biography (Introduction)
- The Homeland (In Progress)
The Fall of Che Guevara
(Available from Amazon.com)
More Reviews:
“[Ryan’s] book combines sound traditional scholarship with readability and a sense of identification and drama.” Times Literary Supplement.
“Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act have allowed Ryan…to tell for the first time the role of the U.S. government in foiling Guevara’s final campaign to ignite a revolution in the backwoods of Bolivia.” Harvard Magazine
“Well-written and exhaustively researched.” Foreign Affairs
“[The book] is a pleasant surprise: a short, unsensational and scholarly account of Guevara’s failed attempt to start a guerrilla insurrection in Bolivia and his death there on 9 October 1967. English Historical Review
“…has the merit of being both original and brief.” London Review of Books
“Fascinating…A great read for those interested in the ideological and revolutionary challenges to U.S. policy in Latin America in the 1960s. Foreign Service Journal
“As a behind the scenes look into the issues and personalities that shaped U.S. foreign policy for Latin America…[this book] is fascinating.” Miami Herald
“A welcome addition to the literature on both Che Guevara and U.S. intervention in Latin America.” Washington Monthly
“Ryan brings fresh interest by telling [the story] primarily from the perspective of the soldiers and diplomats working to oppose Che while struggling to avoid the errors of the Vietnam War. Bolivian Times
"[Ryan] reflects a…well-documented approach…One of the major…theses is that the CIA and the United States government were not the principal intellectual authors of Che’s murder." Journal of American History
Excerpts:
“ ‘A day of warlike events,’ said Guevara of March 23, 1967, a day when small-weapons fire crackled through the jungle on the Bolivian slopes where the mountains drop abruptly to the plains of central South America. While tracking down reports of strange, possibly subversive, activities, a 40-man Bolivian Army patrol fell into a five-man guerrilla ambush, and the struggle Guevara hoped would light the flames of rebellion across the continent had begun.”
* * * * *
“Che Guevara’s body, strapped to the landing skid of a Bolivian helicopter, was on its way to the town of Vallegrande from the tiny backwater settlement of La Higuera, where he had been executed. Beside the pilot rode CIA agent Felix Rodríguez, an intelligence advisor to the Bolivian Army, especially its Second Ranger Battalion. He had helped shape that unit into an effective antiguerrilla force during its special training by American Green Berets and had continued to assist it during its two weeks in the field, culminating in Guevara’s capture."
The Vision of Anglo-America
(Available from Amazon.com)
Reviews:
“Ryan has written a lucid study. More than some previous writers he has detailed long-term British desires to form the union, and he has given a systematic treatment of British attempts to influence public opinion in the United States. The prose is lively, and he utilizes good quotes from primary documents.” Journal of American History
“…Ryan makes effective use of evidence to demonstrate that the British role in the origins of the Cold War was related to her decline as a great power…” International History Review
“Ryan’s research on the British side is thorough, his analysis is generally balanced and perceptive, and he writes with grace and wit.” Australasian Journal of American Studies
“It is valuable for its stress on the irony of British policy. The UK threw itself upon the United States not out of fear of Russia…but out of fear for an Empire it could no longer sustain single handed.” The Guardian
“…this is an impressive, well-written book that is right on the essentials and is a sharp prompt to further investigation.” American Historical Review
“Dr Ryan’s book demonstrate[s] how historians can set exemplary standards for the use of evidence and for the comprehensiveness of case studies….” Review of International Studies
“Britain’s role in the beginning of the Cold War has been examined in such works as…(three studies named). Ryan’s account, however, is the most thoroughly researched.” Choice
“As Ryan correctly remarks, the ‘special relationship’ was the product of British weakness. The United States was called in to redress an international balance which, with the failure of appeasement and the collapse of France, had tipped decisively against Britain.” Reviews in American History
Excerpts:
"Awakening one night, ‘with a sharp stab of almost physical pain,’ Winston Churchill realized that he might be dismissed as Prime Minister by Britain’s voters in the summer of 1945. Brooding, he said ‘The power to shape the future would be denied me. The knowledge and experience I had gathered, the authority and goodwill I had gained in so many countries, would vanish.’ But, in fact, even after his defeat at the polls, his influence on world affairs was far from spent. If his credit at home was limited for the time being, it remained vast in the United States, the largest unit of the English-speaking peoples, a community of which he often spoke, exaggerating its cohesiveness.”
* * * * * *
“Churchill and the government he headed were determined to maintain a relationship with the United States unique among sovereign powers. Specifically, their objectives…were to maintain indefinitely the wartime merger of military commands…. They hoped also for similar coordination within the foreign ministries of the two countries….In short, the policy of Churchill’s government, if successful, would have created in the international arena a new power, one made up of two nations. It could appropriately be called ‘Anglo-America.’”
The Complete Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara and other Captured Documents (introduction)
Edited by Daniel James, re-issued with an introduction of mine.
(Available from Amazon.com)
Here is an excerpt from my introduction.
“[The diaries] are the very frank and personal journals of a man trying desperately, and against great odds, to do something that proved impossible. He records all the irritation, pain, and disappointment of his mission. There are no heroic phrases, no ringing cries to rush to the barricades. The diaries comprise, whatever else, a poignant story, courageous but sad; they chronicle the increasing hopelessness of Guevara’s undertaking, and end only the day before the inevitable disaster, which one can foretell almost with certainty by the middle of the written entries."
Che Guevara: A Biography (introduction)
By Daniel James, re-issued with an introduction by me.
(Available from Amazon.com)
Here are excerpts from my introduction.
“In an odd way Communism and Stalinism were what James and Guevara had in common. James had used his literary talents to oppose Communism for nearly two decades when he began the Guevara biography. So what better project for a staunch foe of Communism than to attack the image of Che Guevara, almost sanctified by much of the international Left? Did the CIA encourage James to do so?...One cannot be sure, but it seems likely.”
* * * * * *
“It is clear that James wanted to prevent Guevara from rising from the grave and lending an almost sacred aura either to Communism or to the radical New Left, then in its heyday in the United States. It is this effort that makes James’s book interesting. It gives readers not only a glimpse of a political attitude from the 1960s that is often overlooked, but a view of Guevara that they will not get elsewhere.”
Here are excerpts from the draft of The Homeland (a work in progress).
"Sir Moses Montefiore, the larger-than-life English champion of oppressed Jews anywhere in the world, arrived in Tangiers in January 1864 carried majestically ashore by hearty stevedores while he reclined, splendidly attired, on a couch. He had come from Spain, where he had been granted an audience with Queen Isabella—royal interviews were easily arranged for Montefiore--and he was headed for Marrakesh to discuss with the sultan the oppression of Jews in Morocco, which European observers feared was intensifying."
* * * * * *
"The troubled and often desperate experience of the Jews in Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries provided the central thrust among Jews throughout Europe not only to dream of returning to the Holy Land, but to make serious arrangements to do it. Unquestionably, the history of Jewish persecution though the ages following the Diaspora in the first centuries of the current era always permeated the thinking and influenced the planning of Jewish activists. But it was the Jewish experience in Eastern Europe, and especially Russia, in the 19th and early 20th centuries that made new kinds of action seem imperative. The result was a well-financed and structured movement, Zionism, one purpose of which was to found a Jewish homeland in Palestine."