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and Ignacio Agramonte y Loynaz, were steeped in classical liberalism. They envisioned Cuba as becoming a society centered on a recognition of natural rights, limited government, and an unfettered and competitive market. Castro himself, throughout the 1950s and into the first year of the Cuban Revolution, embraced many of the most cherished goals of liberalism. The challenge for the Cuban regime, then, was to transition with intellectual and political leaders favorable to liberalism, but also with citizens accustomed to authoritarianism and abuse, into a Marxist society. How could this be done, and how could that transition be justified in the eyes of the citizens? Cuba thus witnessed a decade of intense elite discussion about what elements from the old couplet of liberalism and authoritarianism would fit within the Marxist model and what would not. Put more simply, what would qualify as “within” the revolution and what would not? In fact, as this book documents in fascinating detail, this discussion continued over the next half century. In the end, the principles of classical liberalism were wholly discarded; however, many forms of authoritarianism were firmly preserved. Thus, as Gordy argues throughout the book, the regime drew heavily upon portions of Cuba’s historical legacy. “Ideologies,” the author writes, “are always adjusting to circumstances . . . to reflect popular experiences and the principles that arise from them” (p. 39). I would suggest, however, that strategies that regimes adopt to inculcate an ideology are constantly evolving and adapting to new circumstances in an effort to operationalize a particular vision of that ideology. But the underlying ideology itself—its understanding of the essential nature of human beings, its values and priorities, and its goals—is more resistant to change than are the political strategies to operationalize it. Much of politics in revolutionary Cuba involved the process of transforming institutions and culture—values, attitudes, beliefs—to try tomake them more appropriate and supportive of the ideology of Marxism. To my eye, the evidence laid out in this book shows quite clearly that the regime engaged elites to debate the strategies—what to allow, what to prohibit, what to prioritize—and less to debate the ideology itself. Ultimately, however, Cuba faced the prospect that the ideology around which it had built its revolutionary society itself would collapse. What makes the case study of Cuba so enthralling is the rigid unwillingness of the Cuban government to alter any aspect of the Cuban model that would jeopardize the ideology. This unyielding view came under its greatest threat in the late 1980s when Cuba was cast adrift by the former Easternbloc countries and the Soviet Union. Although communist China in the 1970s and communist Vietnam in the 1980s sacrificed their ideology when they introduced into their societies a rapidly expanding market, Castro resolutely refused this economic policy option. Yet for Cuban leaders, the introduction of market reforms became increasingly unavoidable. Although Che Guevara had written in 1979 that the leadership rejected material incentives as a “primary instrument of motivation” because that would impose the power of economics “over man’s relationships” (p. 111), the regime recognized the desperate need to persuade Cubans to raise labor production levels dramatically. One possibility discussed was to label extra work “voluntary” and pay workers accordingly. The leadership understood that once Marxism is coupled with the market, the ideology becomes something else. The great conundrum for Cuban leaders was that by the end of the twentieth century, Marxism appeared, more and more clearly, to be a failure. It profoundly misinterpreted the individual in the “state of nature” and overestimated the malleability of culture. Most Marxist states had closed their borders, forcing people to live under their ideological terms. Gordy’s book is especially interesting since, even today, while ever more fully embracing a tightly controlled market economy, the Cuban government struggles to define and justify its ideology to its citizens. The relation of ideology to Cuban politics continues to fascinate onlookers, and Living Ideology in Cuba helps us to understand it.