<p>Ra<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">&uacute;</span>l Eduardo Chao received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University and after a brief stint in industry spent 18 years in academe, as Full Professor and Department Chairman at the Universities of Puerto Rico and Detroit. In 1986 he founded a very successful management consultancy, assisting companies and government agencies to develop positive work environments and process improvement techniques as the means to secure improvements in productivity and quality. The Systema Group had as clients many Fortune 100 companies and Federal and State organizations, both in the US and abroad. Chao is the author of 14 previous history books, all skillfully documented with hundreds of photographs and quick biographies of all important characters. Complementing his narrative with timely images &mdash;many of them seldom seen in serious historical treatises&mdash; has been Chao's distinctive contribution to modern historiography.</p>
<p>Ra<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">&uacute;</span>l Chao's new book, <em>Damn the Revolution!</em>, is a masterful and fast paced historical recounting and analysis of four world-shattering events that have not only impacted the French, the Mexicans, the Russians and the Cubans, but have affected the course of human and political destinies everywhere over the last three centuries. As his readers enjoy his scholarly presentations of the drama of revolutions, they get to see the faces of the men and women who moved history. They also have a clearer understanding of important places, circumstances and the roles of secondary characters.</p>
<p>Chao's conclusions are clear: <em>revolutions devour their own children</em>; Robespierre sent Danton to the guillotine, Victoriano Huerta ambushed and killed Francisco Madero, Stalin sent Trotsky into exile and had him assassinated, Castro had Camilo Cienfuegos murdered and Hubert Matos condemned to 30 years in jail. <em>Revolutions end up with throwing nations in the hands of dictators</em>, the French had a Napoleon, the Mexicans had to endure the <em>Decena Tr<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">&aacute;</span>gica</em>, the Russians fell in the hands of Stalin; Castro became the cruelest and oppressive dictator in the New World for over 50 years. <em>As revolutions end</em>, <em>the countries are left poorer and behind the rest of the world in development and freedom</em>. Hence the title of the book, DAMN THE REVOLUTION!</p>