An account of the first 101 years of Jamaica's modern history, this book begins by signalling the importance of the cultural component of Jamaica's recent history but goes on to attend more to the politics, economics and gradual development of civil society, in order to catch the country's trajectory and so better understand current stalemates and get a glimpse of what the near future can bring. It is the both the fractures or divisions across Jamaica created by the upper and political classes and lower classes creativity in music and sport joined with valuable input of civil society toward good governance that the book narrates. Suggestions for civil society succeeding in bridging the fractures where the political parties have failed make up the content of the final third part of the book.