King of the Gunrunners: How a Philadelphia Fruit Importer Inspired a Revolution and Provoked the Spanish-American War (Miller James W.)(Pevná vazba)

By the time he turned thirty at the end of the nineteenth century, John D. Hart thrived as the busiest importer of bananas on the East Coast. A master of ships with a thunderous voice, Hart aggressively carried tropical fruit to an insatiable market with little concern for notions of supply and demand. But when an unexpected crisis hit the fruit business, Hart was unprepared. The financial Panic of 1893 doomed his strategy of bringing in limitless bananas. Jobless consumers could not afford such luxuries. Nearing bankruptcy, Hart was approached by Emilio Nuez, a member of the Cuban Revolutionary Party--a cadre of exiled conspirators in New York whose singular purpose was to liberate the Cuban island from four hundred years of Spanish rule. Nuez enlisted Hart as a "filibuster" to transport guns and ammunition to the Cuban rebels. For nearly three years, Hart became the most visible of a
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