Cuba: The Land and the People

Rating:
Summary: A pleasure to the eye
Review: This book delivers what it promises, a photographic record of the island without getting involved in political statements. Beautifully illustrated throughout, I found myself taking a visual trip of a land that I left a long time ago.

Rating:
Summary: Cuba: The Land and the People
Review: This book falls well short of its title's promise. The photographs give a fairly limited view of life in Cuba, and the accompanying captions (there is no additional text) add little to the reader's understanding of "the land and the people." The reason for this failure becomes apparent in the author's introduction, in which he acknowledges that he speaks little Spanish (and therefore was unable to communicate with most of the people he encountered), and the only experience he has with the country is the few trips he took to take his photographs.

Moreover, many of the photographs are unremarkable -- they look more like typical snapshots any tourist might take, rather than
the work of a professional photographer.

This book is of little use to anyone seeking to develop a greater understanding of Cuban life and culture, and has little value as an "art" book. In all, a must miss.