Bread, or Bullets! is the first thoroughly documented history of organized labor in 19th-century Cuba. It focuses on how urban laborers joined together in collective action during the transition from slave to free labor and in the last decades of Spanish colonial rule in Cuba. [This] argument that urban labor was not absent in the process of colonial uncoupling between Cuba and Spain is new, tight and very well documented. The research is impressive, the data is original, and the material . . . will make this book a touchstone."--Jeremy Adelman, Princeton University