This volume offers a critical and complicated picture of how leisure tourism connected the world after the World War II, transforming coastal lands, traditional societies, and national economies in new ways. The 21 chapters in this book analyze selected case studies of architectures and landscapes around the world, contextualizing them within economic geographies of national development, the geopolitics of the Cold War, the legacies of colonialism, and the international dynamics of decolonization. Postwar leisure tourism evokes a rich array of architectural spaces and altered coastal landscapes, which is explored in this collection through discussions of tourism developments in the Mediterranean littoral, such as Greece, Turkey, and southern France, as well as compelling analyses of Soviet bloc seaside resorts along the Black Sea and Baltic coasts, and in beachscapes and tourism architectures of western and eastern hemispheres, from Southern California to Sri Lanka, South Korea, and Egypt. This collection makes a compelling argument that "leisurescapes," far from being supra-ideological and apolitical spatial expressions of modernization, development, and progress, have often concealed histories of conflict, violence, social inequalities, and environmental degradation. It will be of interest to architectural and urban historians, architects and planners, as well as urban geographers, economic and environmental historians.

After the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, Fidel Castro announced the beginning of aSpecial Period for Cuba. During this time, the Cuban government has been obliged to look outward to other economies of the developed world, specifically targeting tourism as a mechanism for economic growth and development. This book examines the role played by international tourism in Cuba‘s institutional and economic restructuring and the country‘s reinsertion into the capitalist world economy. It provides the most comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the economic, social, environmental and political realities which have emerged in Cuba as a result of the redevelopment of urban tourism since the early 1990s. By analyzing the allocation of tourist resources and its impacts, the generation of tourism policy, and the politics of tourism development, it focuses on the political economy of urban tourism in Cuba and the balance of power between domestic and foreign stakeholders involved in the Cuban tourist industry.

A select, annotated bibliography providing a multidisciplinary guide to Cuba, a country two-thirds the size of Great Britain with some eleven million inhabitants. This volume contains an especially diverse selection of topic headings. There are the usual listings on topics including geography, flora and fauna, prehistory and history, religion, social conditions, foreign relations, economy, finance, industry, literature, sports, media, and the like. In addition, there are sections on tourism and travel guides, travellers' accounts (by era), revolution, slavery and race, and women. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

An evocative and unforgettable memoir from award-winning journalist Carlos Frías about his journey to Cuba where he retraces his family's history and encounters the realities of Cuba under Fidel Castro's rule. Carlos Frías, an award-winning journalist and the American-born son of Cuban exiles, grew up hearing about his parents' homeland only in parables. Their Cuba, the one they left behind four decades ago, was ethereal. It existed, for him, only in their anecdotes, and in the family that remained in Cuba—merely ghosts on the other end of a telephone. Until Fidel Castro fell ill. Sent to Cuba by his newspaper as the country began closing to foreign journalists in August 2006, Frías begins the secret journey of a lifetime—twelve days in the land of his parents. That experience led to this evocative, spectacular, and unforgettable memoir. Take Me With You is written through the unique eyes of a first-generation Cuban-American seeing the forbidden country of his ancestry for the first time. Frías provides a fresh view of Cuba, devoid of overt political commentary, focusing instead on the gritty, tangible lives of the people living in Castro's Cuba. Frías takes in the island nation of today and attempts to reconstruct what the past was like for his parents, retracing their footsteps, searching for his roots, and discovering his history. The story creates lasting and unexpected ripples within his family on both sides of the Florida Straits—and on the author himself.

After the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, the Cuban government has been obliged to look outward to other economies of the developed world, specifically targeting tourism as a mechanism for economic growth and development. This book provides the most comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the economic, social, environmental and political realities which have emerged in Cuba as a result of the redevelopment of urban tourism since the early 1990s.

The eagerly anticipated new novel from the author of the bestselling Dirty Havana trilogy.