"In 1862, a businessman in Cuba with scant experience in rum making took a gamble on a small distillery, hoping to tame a drink that until then was fit only for sailors and laborers. He soon devised a formula that made his rum the favored drink of the sun-washed Caribbean island. The company Facundo Bacardi launched brought worldwide fame to Cuba, and his Bacardi descendants were associated forevermore with the Cuban nation." "In the decades that followed, the Bacardi Rum Company participated in every aspect of Cuban social, political, and economic life. Patriots and partyers, entrepreneurs and intellectuals, the Bacardis provided an example of business and civic leadership in Cuba for nearly a century and helped define what it meant to be Cuban, even after being driven into exile." "The Bacardis are now ready to play a new role in post-Fidel Cuba. Tom Gjelten's remarkable book combines biography, history, and business themes in a single dramatic tale - a revelatory account of Cuba's national struggle."--BOOK JACKET.