Hoo, boy, do I want to get my hands on this!!!

But almost 50 years later, "a lot of Jamaicans feel that since the Union Jack came down, there has been largely disappointment," writer Ian Thomson tells Weekend All Things Considered guest host Noah Adams. Parts of Jamaica are a vacation paradise, but much of the country is crippled by violence and corruption. Thomson traveled all over the island, and everywhere he went, people asked the same question: What has Jamaica done with its independence? Thomson chronicled his search for the answer in his new book, The Dead Yard: A Story of Modern Jamaica. It's a difficult question for an outsider to answer. One woman challenged Thomson directly at a meeting of the Jamaican Historical Society. "You visitors are always getting it wrong," she told him. "Either it's golden beaches or it's guns, guns, guns. Is there nothing in between?" Thomson says that despite the grim picture he paints of conditions on the island, he also did his best to depict the good alongside the bad.

via Hopes Unrealized In Independent Jamaica : NPR.