Manuel Rionda Polledo was one of the most important Cuban business man of the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. His biography is representative of a trajectory that many Spaniards and Creoles in the Gan Antilla followed, although not all were as successful.

Rionda was born in Spain, in Noreña (Asturias) specifically, as a member of a family with business in the Cuban sugar industry. He emigrated to the United States, where he developed while working for one of the world's most important sugar runners, Cesas Czarnikow. From that position he eventually emerged to form the independent Czarnikow-Rionda Company.

Although there are still many unanswered questions, the Cuban sugar industry in the period in which Manuel Rionda lived has been the object of many able studies. There is, however, little research with Muriel McAvoy's biographical-enterprise perspective. This is the major contribution of her book to the topic, and this context provides considerable interest.

McAvoy's book is not remarkable in its analyses. It mainly describes the framework of relations that composed the sugar business and its evolution between the last decades of the nineteenth century and the 1930s. This overall perspective, however, provides a valuable contribution in the context of a historiography that has analyzed the details of the sector in all its dimensions: productive, technological-organizational, commercial, and financial.

The information that McAvoy provides in Sugar Baron: Manuel Rionda and the Fortunes of Pre-Castro Cuba is a very valuable view from the perspective of a sugar businessman and his personal relations on the evolution of the sector. That view challenges some conclusions of other studies. In particular, the book improves our knowledge of the interest networks that were developed around the sugar industry in the Gan Antilla and the United States at two very significant moments: the last decades of nineteenth century and the period during and immediately after the First World War.

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, several North American investors, especially sugar refiners, began to participate in the transformation of Cuba's sugar industry. This process continued into the twentieth century, after the independence of the Gan Antilla from Spain. Cane culture and manufacture and the railroads to support it expanded into the eastern half of the island, a region that until then had remained practically unexplored. Rionda participated in that process, especially in association with one of the main American investors, Edward F. Atkins.

By the beginning of the First World War the transformation and expansion of the Cuban sugar industry had consolidated, and the island hacendados took advantage of opportunities arising from the international conflict. The war drastically reduced European sugar production, and Cuban producers took advantage of the opportunity to double their supply. This required investment that could not be supplied by the industry's usual means. In response, great corporations developed to support the entrance of banks and other financial organizations. His network of personal and enterprise relations and his prestige as a sugar baron allowed Rionda to lead this process. He led the formation of the society that constructed the Central Manatí in 1912 and then led the creation of the greatest sugar company of the world in 1915, the Cuba Cane Sugar Company.

McAvoy's well-written book allows us to know with considerable precision the framework of business and financial relations involved in both the transformation and modernization of the Cuban sugar industry at the end of the nineteenth century and the opening of the business to financial capital in the twentieth century. McAvoy also illuminates the problems associated with the process. These problems became particularly acute during the crises of the 1920s and 1930s.

In general, the conclusions of McAvoy's study confirm the hypotheses defended by other works that have analyzed the problem of the Cuban sugar industry at greater depth and from a wider perspective. It is important, however, to be aware of the underlying evidence that supports its conclusion. The author draws on the Braga Brothers Collection, an archive of the Rionda family, deposited in the University of Florida, in Gainsville. Unfortunately, the author practically uses this as her only source and does not support or challenge it with documentation from other archives, and even seems to ignore parts of the existing historiography. However, despite that defect, the result is a good reference book and an important complementary piece advancing our knowledge about the subjects considered.