La Otra Cuba

Post-Fidel anticipation has tourists flocking to Cuba to bask in the sunset of the revolution: the patched-together Studebakers, the stuck-in-time streetscapes. But visitors often leave without a real sense of the island's rich, pre-Communist past, much less its inscrutable present - both the subjects of new photo books. Michael Dweck's "Habana Libre" (above left, Damiani, $65) is a sun-baked “Who's Who” of Cuba's cultural elite. Michael Connors's "The Splendor of Cuba" (above right, Rizzoli, $85) catalogs the country's 450-year architectural history, casting a rosy eye on exquisitely preserved examples of Spanish-Creole colonial style.