BOOK REVIEWS 79 IJCS Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/ijcs/ to resolve the crisis of the state, proposed by Álvaro García Linera, the Marxist vice-president of Bolivia. Not surprisingly, Sader is a strong supporter of the radical continentalism that has emerged in the twenty-first century in Latin America, not least for its capacity to enhance left forces within nation-states. In the perilous process of ‘state transition’, the previous history of Latin America has often been marked by violent reaction and the physical and political slaughter of the left. In the twenty-first century, the left in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador have defeated coup attempts, but succumbed in Honduras and Paraguay. Older forms of the reform versus revolution debate may have lost their relevance, but the dilemmas they represented are still burrowing up through their own molehills. Sader’s book is a very serious contribution to such debates today, based on a lifelong engagement. It carries its scholarship lightly, and anyone with an interest in the direction of anti-capitalist politics will appreciate this very accessibly-written book. Those interested in the particular potential of the new politics of Latin America to underpin a new phase of development in the Cuban Revolution will need to take into account this magisterial survey and its strategic perspective. Steve Ludlam, University of Sheffield, UK Daniel C. Walsh, An Air War With Cuba: The United States Radio Campaign Against Castro (McFarland & Co., 2012) pb 311pp. ISBN: 9780786465064 Reviewed by Luis Herrán-Ávila Knowing what we know about the US government’s efforts to destabilise Castro’s regime in Cuba there would seem to be few stories left to tell. However, Daniel C. Walsh’s An Air War With Cuba delivers a fresh perspective on the achievements, limits and shortcomings of the ‘air war’ against Castro and, more broadly, on the arguable effectiveness of radio propaganda campaigns as instruments of foreign policy. In comparing the successful political uses of radio broadcasts in Guatemala with the persistent failure of the propaganda wars against Cuba, Walsh brings together the histories of communications technology and the post-Bay of Pigs Cold War, showing the often disjointed efforts by subsequent US administrations to lay the legal and political groundwork for the creation of Radio Marti, the most palpable product of these arguably ineffective ‘radio wars’. Walsh takes the reader into the intricate world of bilateral diplomacy and international espionage, and fleshes out the political dilemmas posed by an ideologically diverse exile community, the effects of the various waves of Cuban emigration, and the anxieties within the American political system towards