"The one and only book that treats the nineteenth-century Cuban figure Jose Marti as a human instead of an idol, an apostle, or an unblemished personality." - Tom Miller, author of Revenge of the Saguaro Jose Marti (1853-1895) was the founding hero of Cuban independence. In all of modern Latin American history, arguably only the "Great Liberator" Simon Bolivar rivals Marti in stature and legacy. Today he is revered by both the Castro regime and the Cuban exile community, whose shared veneration of the "apostle" of freedom has led to his virtual apotheosis as a national saint. In Jose Marti: A Revolutionary Life, Alfred J. Lopez presents the definitive biography of the Cuban patriot and martyr. Writing from a nonpartisan perspective and drawing on years of research using original Cuban and U.S. sources, including materials never before used in a Marti biography, Lopez strips away generations of mythmaking and portrays Marti as Cuba's greatest founding father and one of Latin America's literary and political giants, without suppressing his public missteps and personal flaws. In a lively account that engrosses like a novel, Lopez traces the full arc of Marti's eventful life, from his childhood and adolescence in Cuba, to his first exile and subsequent life in Spain, Mexico City, and Guatemala, through his mature revolutionary period in New York City and much-mythologized death in Cuba on the battlefield at Dos Rios. The first major biography of Marti in over half a century and the first ever in English, Jose Marti is the most substantial examination of Marti's life and work ever published. "The life, the history and the facts are all here in Lopez's volume." - The Washington Post