The most recommended books about Havana Cuba

Graham Greene is another master craftsman of thriller novels that explore political, moral, and ethical ambiguities in a way that both entertains and provokes. Better known for Our Man in Havana, Greene was sufficiently uncomfortable with The Confidential Agent that he wanted it published under a pseudonym. Yet I agree with critics that this tale of a foreign agent’s covert efforts to buy British coal to fuel a European civil war is among his best. Greene reputedly wrote it in six weeks, assisted by a diet of amphetamines and an affair with his landlady’s daughter, giving the novel a pace and rawness that reflect its creation.  

A watershed work in the new history of “the global Cold War” in the Third World, where Cuba’s revolutionary government acted with remarkable audacity to offer material, human, and military support to African revolutionaries (with the Soviet Union often a minor player). Gleijeses performed archival feats in Cuba, Africa, and the U.S. to bring together this many-sided portrait of skullduggery, intimate solidarity, and Cuban revolutionary agency.  

In this fascinating study, Chasteen examines the historical experiences that molded Latin American popular dance from an Atlantic perspective. It delves into the “deep” history of Latin American culture and analyzes the development of dancing culture in its socio-historical context. This is not only a well-researched, but also a well written and oftentimes funny book that is broadly accessible. It is a must-read for any new scholar interested in the field of Black performance culture. Although the focus is on Latin America, Chasteen’s study reveals connections that are also of great importance to understanding the historical development of Black dance culture in North America.

Utterly engrossing, this behind-the-scenes narrative over many decades demonstrates that the Cuban diplomats were almost always willing to move towards normalizing relations, but were repeatedly stymied by non-negotiable demands from the U.S. side. Besides that, it’s full of piquant details, involving the many non-official actors and secret meetings in New York, on the island, or in other countries. Diplomatic history rarely gets this exciting!

This book is part of a series that extensively documents watershed modern and contemporary exhibitions. The Havana Biennial of 1989 was especially important because it developed what has been called South-South connections in the exhibition of contemporary art–in other words, connections between different parts of the Global South or non-West that are not routed through European or North American art capitals. This was possible because, during the Cold War, Cuba maintained extensive cultural networks throughout the so-called Third World

I had no idea that a Cuban boy recalling his childhood could so drown me in a family and culture worlds apart from my own. Waiting for Snow evoked laughter, astonishment, and tears. The father in this story, like my own in some ways, replaced his son with another boy not even his own. Eire’s attempts to reconcile with his father never worked. I took heart from his experience. It was similar to my own attempts to cross the ravine and reach my stepfather’s love. Eire’s hilarity, sharp intellect, and ability to write the most eloquent cursing I’ve ever read kept me reading this book by a man who is now a professor of theology at Yale.

This perfectly titled tale of a bucket-list trip that ends up down a very deep rabbit hole delivers on its promise.

Even for a non-thriller reader, it kept me up late turning pages--there was simply no pause in the action and continually side-switching intrigue. It will leave you dizzy, enthralled, and either dying to hightail it to Cuba and fill yourself with rum or definitely scratching both off your own bucket list.

It will also leave you surprisingly touched as narrator Tanner, a self-described loser in life, gets his sea legs in both love and life. The ending will blow your mind.

Alice Lascelle’s Ten Cocktails is not so much a recipe book as it is a musing on the ten drinks that have defined one woman’s personal journey as a drinks journalist. Part travelogue, part memoir, part historical tour, the book explores the author’s own experiences with drinks while diving into their broader social contexts.

The accounts are meaningful, engaging, and surprisingly entertaining. I particularly loved the description of her British parents’ inadequate storage of ice and the woefully poor gin and tonics they served up as a result. An all too familiar scene from my own household growing up - I now understand why I disliked this drink for so long.

Privately published in 1928 by Horace Liveright, British playwright and journalist Basil Woon captured the energy that took hold of Havana during Prohibition in the USA, as Americans flocked by the thousands to drink, gamble, and party served by hundreds of Cuban and self-exiled American bartenders amid the tropical beauty that is Cuba. This book opened my eyes to clues that helped me sort out the true origins of the Mary Pickford, the Mojito, and the El Presidente. While my husband and I travelled to Havana once a year for ten years, this book guided us to the places we wanted to visit to capture the spirit and essence of Cuban cocktails.

Just like the United States has been fixated in Cuba since its creation as a nation, American historians have obsessed with the history of Cuba for decades, but most have focused on the 20th century, or gone back as far as the 18th century. Alejandro de la Fuente and his collaborators take the reader back to the first century of the Spanish colonization of the island and describes the transformation of Havana from a sleepy port town in the northwest of the island into one of the most important ports in the Spanish empire and the Atlantic world. The book combines great narrative history with abundant tables and graphs about trade, naval traffic, and urban expansion.