Castro: A Professor’s Fantasy

Professor C. Wright Mills of Columbia University has written a book called Listen Yankee (McGraw Hill, $3.95) which may well administer the coup de grace to his reputation as a social scientist. Brief as this volume is, it can be characterized as chloroform in print. It is so disorganized that the liberal Washington Post compared Mills to the late Wilhelm Reich and it makes appalling errors of fact.

The book consists of eight letters from an imaginary Cuban revolutionist, and a brief note to the reader in which Dr. Mills reassures us that we can still be saved provided we help Latin America expropriate all United States enterprise. It is almost entirely hortatory and devoid of information; it blames all Latin American ills on United States imperialism; it finds that Castro’s Cuba is always right and the American Government always wrong; it sounds like a tape recording of one of Castro’s TV harangues.

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Nathaniel Weyl

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Professor C. Wright Mills of Columbia University has written a book called Listen Yankee (McGraw Hill, $3.95) which may well administer the coup de grace to his reputation as a social scientist. Brief as this volume is, it can be characterized as chloroform in print. It is so disorganized that the liberal Washington Post compared Mills to the late Wilhelm Reich and it makes appalling errors of fact.

The book consists of eight letters from an imaginary Cuban revolutionist, and a brief note to the reader in which Dr. Mills reassures us that we can still be saved provided we help Latin America expropriate all United States enterprise. It is almost entirely hortatory and devoid of information; it blames all Latin American ills on United States imperialism; it finds that Castro’s Cuba is always right and the American Government always wrong; it sounds like a tape recording of one of Castro’s TV harangues.