Andrew Summers Rowan (1857–1943)

A message to Garcia is nothing more than a short inspirational essays of not much more than six pages. The self-published author created a hype which made the essay extremely popular. It is claimed to have sold over 40 million copies. The content of the essay is derived from a heroic mission undertaken by Captain Andrew Rowan to convey a message to the Cuban rebels in Spanish-controlled Cuba to establish contact and form an alliance with the United States against Spain.

Elbert Hubbard essay, published in 1899, was based on a report he had heard about Andrew Rowan brave mission. Many years later, Andrew Rowan, who was a published author, wrote a short story based on his experience, entitled "How I carried the message to Garcia". While this story is apparently based on Rowan's experience, he has also sometimes asserted that the story is entirely fictional.

While A message to Garcia may have had its function in its day, the essay is of no particular value to readers today. It is written in an old-fashioned style, by a boastful and over-self confident author. As the essay is so extremely short, it is now usually printed together with a number of supplementary materials. In the edition by Shanghai Joint Publishing (2010), Andrew Rowan's short story How I carried the message to Garcia is one of the appendices. This is somewhat awkward, because Rowan's story has much more merit, and deserves much more to be read than Hubbard's essay. Rowan's story is a fairly well-written adventurous story of about 40 pages. It would make much more sense to publish Rowan's story and add Hubbard's essay as an appendix.

The Chinese edition also includes two further contributions inspired on the theme and related to the aforementioned materials. These contributions are however of a shamefully low quality.

The historical background of How I carried the message to Garcia is definitely interesting, and the short story might well be read by a wider audience. Hopefully, the story can be accessed through anthologies.… (altro)