Roberto González Echevarría is a Cuban-born critic of Latin American literature and culture. He is the Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature at Yale University.
His Myth and Archive won the 1989-90 MLA’s Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize and the Latin American Studies Association’s 1992 Bryce Wood Book Award, and The Pride of Havana received the Dave Moore Award for the Best Baseball Book of 2002. His Love and the Law in Cervantes (2005) had its origin in his 2002 DeVane Lectures at Yale.
An international symposium was held in his honor at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Arecibo (2002) and an issue (no. 33, 2004) of Encuentro de la cultura cubana was published in his honor. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In March 2011, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal of 2010 by President Obama.

Echevarria, a literary critic and professor of Hispanic and comparative literature at Yale, has written a definitive cultural history of Cuban baseball from 1860 to the present. A former semi-pro catcher born and raised in Cuba, he currently plays in the Connecticut Senior Baseball League. According to Echevarria, baseball filled a void when Cuba rejected bullfighting and other Spanish influences. Despite all the political turbulence, the game has survived to become as much a part of Cuba's social fabric as soccer is for Brazil. The study features an excellent bibliography plus detailed notes for each chapter. The research is exhaustive, based on primary sources and interviews that include numerous anecdotes, making this an engaging read. Although this book is not for everyone, purists and historians of baseball will enjoy it. Buy where demand warrants.ALarry Little, Penticton P.L., B.C.
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