The History of Havana

This concise history of Havana from colonial times to the present is the first book from the Palgrave Essential Histories series dedicated to an urban history rather than a national history. (Previous volumes have focused on Germany, Denmark, Venezuela, and Cuba, among others.) The emphasis on Havana is particularly interesting within this context as the authors tend to conflate Cuba’s general history with that of the capital city, a tendency that has become increasingly common in recent years as Havana has once again become the public face of the island. The authors, the American novelist Dick Cluster and Cuban political scientist Rafael Hernández, also set forth to free Havana’s history from the ideological lenses that have often colored its historical representations since Castro’s forces entered the capital in 1959. Instead, they advocate a binocular view through which Havana can be considered as a global city at the crossroads of multiple...