Passing Through Havana PDF Download

Author: Felicia Rosshandler
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0312597797
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Author: Felicia Rosshandler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Author: Peter Moruzzi
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
ISBN: 142360993X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Take a trip to the golden age of Havana in this gorgeously illustrated volume of vintage photographs, postcards, brochures, and other ephemera. Featuring hundreds of historic images and cultural artifacts, Havana Before Castro documents how the Cuban capital evolved from a Prohibition Era getaway destination to a heady blend of glittering nightclubs, outrageous cabarets, all-night bars, and backstreet brothels. Here, captured in one amazing book, is the drama, passion, intrigue, and opulence of a legendary city during its heyday—before the Castro regime took over and Americans were banned from travel to this tropical paradise. In chapters covering such topics as Cuban rum and cigars, the world-famous Tropicana Club, and Havana’s association with the mob, author Peter Moruzzi provides essential historical context for the many fascinating and evocative images.

Author: Joseph L. Scarpaci
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 9780807853696
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Newly revised and redesigned, this book assesses nearly 500 years of urban development and planning in Havana, paying particular attention to the city's rich blend of Spanish-Cuban-Latin American-North American architecture and design.

Author: Mark Kurlansky
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1632863936
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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A city of tropical heat, sweat, ramshackle beauty, and its very own cadence--a city that always surprises--Havana is brought to pulsing life by New York Times bestselling author Mark Kurlansky. Award-winning author Mark Kurlansky presents an insider's view of Havana: the elegant, tattered city he has come to know over more than thirty years. Part cultural history, part travelogue, with recipes, historic engravings, photographs, and Kurlansky's own pen-and-ink drawings throughout, Havana celebrates the city's singular music, literature, baseball, and food; its five centuries of outstanding, neglected architecture; and its extraordinary blend of cultures. Like all great cities, Havana has a rich history that informs the vibrant place it is today--from the native Taino to Columbus's landing, from Cuba's status as a U.S. protectorate to Batista's dictatorship and Castro's revolution, from Soviet presence to the welcoming of capitalist tourism. Havana is a place of extremes: a beautifully restored colonial city whose cobblestone streets pass through areas that have not been painted or repaired since long before the revolution. Kurlansky shows Havana through the eyes of Cuban writers, such as Alejo Carpentier and José Martí, and foreigners, including Graham Greene and Hemingway. He introduces us to Cuban baseball and its highly opinionated fans; the city's music scene, alive with the rhythm of Son; its culinary legacy. Through Mark Kurlansky's multilayered and electrifying portrait, the long-elusive city of Havana comes stirringly to life.

Author: Consuelo Hermer
Publisher: Hermer Press
ISBN: 1443730734
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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A GUIDE TO CUBA AND THE CUBANS by CONSUELO HERMER AND MARJORIE MAY. Contents include: FOREWORD XI CHAPTER i One, If by Land ... 3 Getting to Havana; expenses involved. Going through Customs. Hotels, pensions, furnished apartments, fur nished houses. Intelligence service, CHAPTER n Three Bags Full 33 A Cuban clothes guide for men and women. CHAPTER ni So Near andYet So Foreign 46 What to see and what to do in Havana. Holiday time in Cuba. Routine points of in terest. CHAPTER iv The Pause for Refreshment 1 04 Eating your way through Havana. Cuban specialties and where to find them. Rec ommended restaurants. Viii CONTENTS CHAPTER v Dawn s Early Light 132 Night life in Havana. Music and dancing. Bars and night clubs. Recommended places. CHAPTER vi To Market, to Market 159 Shopping in Havana. What to bring back. Recom mended stores. CHAPTER vn Country Cousins 188 Fifteen trips into the in terior of the Island. CHAPTER viii What Makes the Wheels Go Round 224 Taking apart the Cubans to see how they tick, CHAPTER ix How to Win Friends Ha vana Style 245 Do's and DonYs for a pleas ant visit. APPENDIX 260 GLOSSARY 271 TRAVEL RATES 280 INDEX 283 ILLUSTRATIONS Aerial View of Havana, Showing the Capitol 20 The Cuban Capitol, Havana 21 The Prado, and the Sevilla-Biltmore Hotel 36 Shrine Commemorating the First Mass Held in the Western World 37 Children's Hospital in Havana 37 The Gomez Monument on Malecon 68 Remnant of Original Wall Which Sur rounded Havana 69 Colon Catedral, Havana 84 A Cross-Eyed Angel Leads a Procession During Holy Week 85 Main Entrance to the University of Havana 85 Eighteenth-Century Patio, Now the En trance to a Bar 116 Lottery Ticket Peddler 117 An Open-Air Market in the Residential Section of Havana 132 La Fuerza, Fortress Built hy De Soto 133 ILLUSTRATIONS An Air View of Mono Castle, Havana Harbor 1 64 Primitive Transport of Sugar Cane 165 Barrels of Rum 165 A Pineapple Field 1 80 A Seventeenth-Century Patio 181 Itinerant Coffee Vendors 2 1 2 A Balanced Diet for Cubans 213 The Gamblers Paradise and Purgatory 228 The Wheel of Fortune at Oriental Park 228 The Conga on the Streets During Carnival Time 229 Cuban Torch-Bearers in the Comyarsas 229 Cuban Troubadours 244 Night-Club Rumba Dancer 244 A Geological Curiosity in the Vinales Valley 245 Tobacco Experimental Station, San Juan y Martinez 245 Street Scene, Santiago de Cuba 260 Typical Street of a Cuban Provincial Town 261 Cadet on Guard at the Naval Academy, Mariel 261. FOREWORD: MOST TRAVEL BOOKS take you far, but usually not far enough. Too often they include too much historical material, too little about the facts of life. Knowledge of any city, after all, is written in terms of its people, its food, its customs. Take Havana, now. There have been no books about Havana that make its people real to us. If Americans consider the Cubans touched, they, in their turn, sum us up as Americanos locos. But the Cubans, at least, admire the stuff Americans are made of, even though it defies their analysis. It's time for visitors to return the compliment, to be more open-minded and less jingoistic. The geniality and gracious dig nity of life in Havana and the mercurial charm of its inhabitants deserve understanding and appreciation. There have been no books about Havana that guide tourists through the complicated maze of Cuban etiquette.

Author: Carlos Eire
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 147110835X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 579

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A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous and cruel, like any other-but with certain differences. The neighbour's monkey was liable to escape and run across your roof. Surfing was conducted by driving cars across the breakwater. Lizards and firecrackers made frequent contact. Carlos Eire's childhood was a little different from most. His father was convinced he had been Louis XVI in a past life. At school, classmates with fathers in the Batista government were attended by chauffeurs and bodyguards. At a home crammed with artifacts and paintings, portraits of Jesus spoke to him in dreams and nightmares. Then, in January 1959, the world changes: Batista is suddenly gone, a cigar-smoking guerrilla has taken his place, and Christmas is cancelled. The echo of firing squads is everywhere. And, one by one, the author's schoolmates begin to disappear-spirited away to the United States. Carlos will end up there himself, without his parents, never to see his father again. Narrated with the urgency of a confession, WAITING FOR SNOW IN HAVANA is both an ode to a paradise lost and an exorcism. More than that, it captures the terrible beauty of those times in our lives when we are certain we have died-and then are somehow, miraculously, reborn.

Author: Eugene Robinson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439138095
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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In power for forty-four years and counting, Fidel Castro has done everything possible to define Cuba to the world and to itself -- yet not even he has been able to control the thoughts and dreams of his people. Those thoughts and dreams are the basis for what may become a post-Castro Cuba. To more fully understand the future of America's near neighbor, veteran reporter Eugene Robinson knew exactly where to look -- or rather, to listen. In this provocative work, Robinson takes us on a sweaty, pulsating, and lyrical tour of a country on the verge of revolution, using its musicians as a window into its present and future. Music is the mother's milk of Cuban culture. Cubans express their fondest hopes, their frustrations, even their political dissent, through music. Most Americans think only of salsa and the Buena Vista Social Club when they think of the music of Cuba, yet those styles are but a piece of a broad musical spectrum. Just as the West learned more about China after the Cultural Revolution by watching From Mao to Mozart, so will readers discover the real Cuba -- the living, breathing, dying, yet striving Cuba. Cuban music is both wildly exuberant and achingly melancholy. A thick stew of African and European elements, it is astoundingly rich and influential to have come from such a tiny island. From rap stars who defy the government in their lyrics to violinists and pianists who attend the world's last Soviet-style conservatory to international pop stars who could make millions abroad yet choose to stay and work for peanuts, Robinson introduces us to unforgettable characters who happily bring him into their homes and backstage discussions. Despite Castro's attempts to shut down nightclubs, obstruct artists, and subsidize only what he wants, the musicians and dancers of Cuba cannot stop, much less behave. Cubans move through their complicated lives the way they move on the dance floor, dashing and darting and spinning on a dime, seducing joy and fulfillment and next week's supply of food out of a broken system. Then at night they take to the real dance floors and invent fantastic new steps. Last Dance in Havana is heartwrenching, yet ultimately as joyous and hopeful as a rocking club late on a Saturday night.

Author: Yoani Sanchez
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1935554913
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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She's been kidnapped and beaten, lives under surveillance, and can only get online—in disguise—at tourist hotspots. She's a blogger, she's a Cuban, and she's a worldwide sensation. Yoani Sánchez is an unusual dissident: no street protests, no attacks on big politicos, no calls for revolution. Rather, she produces a simple diary about what it means to live under the Castro regime: the chronic hunger and the difficulty of shopping; the art of repairing ancient appliances; and the struggles of living under a propaganda machine that pushes deep into public and private life. For these simple acts of truth-telling her life is one of constant threat. But she continues on, refusing to be silenced—a living response to all who have ceased to believe in a future for Cuba.

Author: T. J. English
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061795585
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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In modern-day Havana, the remnants of the glamorous past are everywhere—old hotel-casinos, vintage American cars & flickering neon signs speak of a bygone era that is widely familiar & often romanticized, but little understood. In Havana Nocturne, T.J. English offers a multifaceted true tale of organized crime, political corruption, roaring nightlife, revolution & international conflict that interweaves the dual stories of the Mob in Havana & the event that would overshadow it, the Cuban Revolution. As the Cuban people labored under a violently repressive regime throughout the 50s, Mob leaders Meyer Lansky & Charles "Lucky" Luciano turned their eye to Havana. To them, Cuba was the ultimate dream, the greatest hope for the future of the US Mob in the post-Prohibition years of intensified government crackdowns. But when it came time to make their move, it was Lansky, the brilliant Jewish mobster, who reigned supreme. Having cultivated strong ties with the Cuban government & in particular the brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista, Lansky brought key mobsters to Havana to put his ambitious business plans in motion. Before long, the Mob, with Batista's corrupt government in its pocket, owned the biggest luxury hotels & casinos in Havana, launching an unprecedented tourism boom complete with the most lavish entertainment, the world's biggest celebrities, the most beautiful women & gambling galore. But their dreams collided with those of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara & others who would lead the country's disenfranchised to overthrow their corrupt government & its foreign partners—an epic cultural battle that English captures in all its sexy, decadent, ugly glory. Bringing together long-buried historical information with English's own research in Havana—including interviews with the era's key survivors—Havana Nocturne takes readers back to Cuba in the years when it was a veritable devil's playground for mob leaders. English deftly weaves together the parallel stories of the Havana Mob—featuring notorious criminals such as Santo Trafficante Jr & Albert Anastasia—& Castro's 26th of July Movement in a riveting, up-close look at how the Mob nearly attained its biggest dream in Havana—& how Fidel Castro trumped it all with the revolution.