Cuba

*Cuba, photographs by David Alan Harvey, text by Elizabeth Newhouse (1999). Photographer Harvey's camera captures, lovingly, this isle's beauty amid a Spanish-colonial backdrop. His portraits reveal ebullient, resourceful people.

The Handsomest Man in Cuba, by Lynette Chiang (2007). An expert at avoiding touristy resort towns, Lynette Chiang travels deep into Cuba's gritty ordinary communities on a folding bicycle and a tight budget. The color in Chiang's vividly painted recollections comes not from what she does, but from the characters she encounters. Fully dependent on local Cubans for food and shelter, Chiang discovers that Cuba's ordinary towns are filled with extraordinary people.

Havana: Autobiography of a City, by Alfredo José Estrada (2007). Alfredo José Estrada, founder of Hispanic magazine, returns to Cuba after 30 years of exile to reveal the essence of one of the oldest cities in the "New World" by walking in the footsteps of the figures that make Havana famous—Ponce de León, Guevara, Hemingway, and even the Buena Vista Social Club.