City of Play shows how play is built into the very fabric of the modern city. From playgrounds to theme parks, skittle alleys to swimming pools, to the countless uncontrolled spaces which the urban habitat affords – play is by no means just a childhood affair. A myriad essentially unproductive playful pursuits have, through time, modelled the modern city and landscape. Architect and scholar Rodrigo Pérez de Arce's erudite, original, and often surprising study explores a curiously neglected dimension of architectural design and practice: ludic space. It is an architectural history of the playground – from the hippodrome to the Situationist city – of space released from productive ends in the pursuit of leisure. But this is more than just a book about how architecture has incorporated play into its spaces and structures, it is a history of the modern city itself. The ludic imagination impregnated modernist ideals, and what begins with the playground ends with a re-consideration of the whole sweep of the modern movement through the filter of leisure and play. Because play is such a basic or fundamental human experience, the book re-grounds the architect's concerns with those of non-architects – and not only those of adults but also of children. It seeks to give everyone – architects and other ordinary city-dwellers alike – a better understanding about what is at stake in the making of the public spaces of our cities.

No aspect of Cuban life more clearly epitomizes their government's emphasis on image-building and individual participation than the system of physical culture and competitive athletics. Indeed the Cuban record in international athletics is the most universally recognized success of the communist revolution, as indicated by the Cuban arrival in the 1972 Olympics and the 1991 Pan-American Games, when Cuba beat the United States in the gold medal tally, dominating boxing, baseball, and winning the marathon. The fruits of the Cuban sports system were again in evidence at the Barcelona Olympics of 1992, despite the severe deprivation caused by the collapse of the island's socialist allies.In spite of the obvious success and political importance of sport in Cuba, very little has been written on the subject. Sport in Cuba closes this gap. In the first major study on the Cuban system of sports and physical culture, Paula J. Pettvino and Geralyn Pye analyze how sports was given such a high priority in Cuba, how the country became a world power by the mid-1970s, and the impact of sports on Cuban society. Moving from the early days when the government's approach to sports was loosely defined, through the construction of a complex system of physical culture, to the current years of uncertainty, Sport in Cuba utilizes both archival sources and personal interviews. It will be of interest to Latin Americanists and students of sports.