"This innovative, stimulating collection brings together the best of the new work on the social, political, and cultural impact of banana exports in the Caribbean and Central and South America. The essays provide insight into the evolution of trade regimes, popular forms of contention, and the banana in the American imagination from the early twentieth century to the present. They signal new paths for comparative work on tropical commodities, corporate strategies, the interaction of multinational companies with local governments, labor movements, contract farming, growers associations, race, immigration, nationalism, dependency, globalization, and economic development."--Catherine LeGrand, McGill University