Havana Before Castro: When Cuba Was a Tropical Playground

Featuring hundreds of vintage photographs, postcards, brochures, and other materials evocative of time and place, Havana Before Castro: When Cuba Was a Tropical Playground documents how the city of Havana evolved from Prohibition haven and rich man's playground to a heady blend of glittering nightclubs, outrageous cabarets, all-night bars, and backstreet brothels. Here, captured in one amazing book, is the drama, passion, intrigue, and opulence of a legendary city during its heyday-before the Castro dictatorship re-imagined the country and Americans were banned from travel to this tropical paradise.

An architectural historian by profession, Peter Moruzzi is an acknowledged expert on mid-century Modern architecture and design. He is the founder of the Palm Springs Modern Committee, an internationally recognized historic preservation organization, and the writer/director of Desert Holiday, a documentary film chronicling the history of Palm Springs as seen through vintage postcards. He resides in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles and in Palm Springs.

Through vintage and contemporary photographs, brochures, postcards, and artifacts evocative of time and place, Havana Before Castro tells the story of the city that was the most popular exotic destination for Americans during the forty years between World War I and Castro's revolution.

Through vintage and contemporary photographs, brochures, postcards, and artifacts evocative of time and place, Havana Before Castro tells the story of the city that was the most popular exotic destination for Americans during the forty years between World War I and Castro's revolution.

See how Havana evolved from America's Prohibition haven and rich man's playground to a heady blend of glittering nightclubs, outrageous cabarets, all-night bars, and backstreet brothels.

Visit Havana's seamy Shanghai Theatre as well as its glamorous Tropicana, Montmartre, and Sans Souci nightclubs.

Linger at La Floridita — the cradle of the daiquiri cocktail (one of Hemingway's favorite watering holes) — rub elbows with Frank Sinatra at Sloppy Joe's Bar, and learn why Cuban cigars remain the world's most highly prized.

Follow the parade of corrupt presidents who, along with American mobsters such a Meyer Lansky, welcomed the mass tourism that led to Havana becoming a tropical Vegas swirling in a haze of rum and cigars, backed by a conga beat.