Book Reviews : In Congress Assembled: The Legislative Process in the National Government. By DANIEL M. BERMAN. (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1964. Pp. xv, 432. $6.50.)

• DOI: 10.1177/106591296401700417
• Author: Ned V. Joy
• Date: 01 December 1964
• Published date: 01 December 1964
• Subject Matter: Articles

802
on Peru. There is a lack of order and coherence, although the informal journalistic
manner of presentation, replete with exaggerations, carries the reader along at a
rapid pace. It is hard to believe that at the Pentagon &dquo;lights had burned all night for
months&dquo; in preparing the Bay of Pigs invasion. Nor is it plausible that &dquo;large detach-
ments of FBI and CIA experts were reported in Falcon (Venezuela) peering under
rocks for communists,&dquo; or that &dquo;in fact, Havana was turned into a huge brothel for
gringos.&dquo; More believable are the score of photographs reflecting the harsh life of the
numerous
poor. There is no index.
There are separate chapters on British Guiana, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia,
and Peru. Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Panama and Ecuador are telescoped into
less than fifty pages of commentary and analysis. The opening and closing chapters
deal with Cuba, or more accurately, with the author’s hero, Fidel Castro. The latter’s
speech-making is idolized as simple, direct, frank, disdaining notes, and covering
every aspect without jargon or cant. Notwithstanding shortcomings in managerial
skills and the Cubans’ less than full addiction to hard work, the revolution to Bel-
frage is a harbinger of things to come elsewhere in the hemisphere. For him, His-
panic America will no longer remain &dquo;a lost continent, behind a tapestry of myths
woven
by a few gringos for whom it was a copious, but contemptible, source of loot.&dquo;
Even this savoring of the author’s attitude does not fully reveal his intense partisan-
ship. For what other reason could there be for the complete omission -
or suppres-
sion -
of the unpleasant facts of Cuban life: subversion and intervention in other
countries, the militarization of youth and children, party-controlled press and judi-
ciary, decision-making in Moscow, and the blood baths of 1960?
WILLARD F. BARBER
University of Maryland
In Congress Assembled: The Legislative Process in the...