criticized the heavy US imprint on local culture and was circumspect about projecting British power. Yet, he also viewed non-white locals as drags on modernity. In assessing images from Muybridge’s 1875 trip to the isthmus, Aguirre maintains that these photographs of people, places, and machines subtly questioned the utility of empire and technology in improving local life. Aguirre argues that these photographs, 20 of which are helpfully reproduced, “suggest not only that the railroad’s” potential for modernizing Panama was vastly oversold but also that attempts to represent this jagged edge of tropical modernity were far more difficult than imagined” (119). For his part, Gilbert took pride in the growth of US influence and considered the isthmus to be “a crucial” component of the US trans-hemispheric empire” (121), particularly as construction of the Panama Canal began. At the same time, Gilbert, known as the “Kipling of the Isthmus,” suggested that life in Panama was not the paradise that promoters made it out to be, given its tropical climate and the sociopolitical conditions in the Canal Zone. A scarcity of local voices is one of the few shortcomings of Aguirre’s study. Receptions to such depictions could have shed more light on tensions at the grassroots. It is an oversight he acknowledges in light of limited Panamanian archives (19). Nevertheless, Aguirre’s objective was to capture Anglo-American perspectives to explain how domineering neocolonial policies drew popular support at home. In this endeavor, Aguirre succeeds. MICHAEL E. NEAGLE Nichols College Dudley, Massachusetts michael.neagle@nichols.edu CUBA Culture and the Cuban State: Participation, Recognition, and Dissonance under Communism. By Yvon Grenier. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. Pp. 285. $110.00 cloth. doi:10.1017/tam.2018.127 Yvon Grenier breaks with existing scholarship that takes, in his analysis, an often sympathetic if not uncritical position on the Cuban state’s cultural policy. A political scientist by training, Grenier stresses the complicity of individual figures with the state’s regulation of culture—that is, how artists, intellectuals, and writers conform to unspoken and shifting limits on freedom of expression to avoid being excluded from the arena of public discourse and losing benefits like state-sanctioned travel abroad and access to international art and literary markets. Based on semi-structured conversations with intellectuals and artists, published interviews, cultural and academic publications, and the content of artistic and literary works, Grenier ’s book alternates between survey chapters and more detailed case studies. 202 REVIEWS