Samuel Farber was born and raised in Marianao, Cuba, and came to the United States in February 1958. He obtained a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1969 and taught at a number of colleges and universities including UCLA and, most recently, Brooklyn College, where he is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science. His scholarship on Cuba is extensive and includes many articles and two previous books: Revolution and Reaction in Cuba, 1933–1960 (Wesleyan University Press, 1976) and The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered (University of North Carolina Press, 2006). Farber was active in the Cuban high school student movement against Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s, and has been involved in socialist politics for more than fifty years.