The Cuban Connection: Drug Trafficking, Smuggling, and Gambling in Cuba from the 1920s to the Revolution. EDUARDO SAENZ ROVNER: Translated by Russ Davidson. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008

The pithy title of Saénz Rovner's2005 book, La conexión cubana, nowavailable in a fine English-language translation by Russ Davidson, alludes tothe famed police thriller involving a heroin shipment on its way fromMarseilles to New York. The reference is apt; much of the study deals with therise of Havana as a transshipment point in drug trafficking networks thatlinked European and Andean middlemen and producers, including some in the portcity of Marseilles, to markets in the United States.