Cuba Classics: A Celebration of Vintage American Automobiles

In this paean to the vintage car, Baker, who has also provided the photos, juxtaposes American autos against the backdrop of Cuba to great effect.""Today, Cuba possesses about 450,000 cars, of which one-sixth are pre-revolutionary American autos dating back to the '20s and '30s,"" he writes. Most of the cars pictured here, however, come from the 1950s: a pristine-looking green 1950 Chevrolet Styline Bel-Air is parked alongside a gray, weathered house; in the foreground an old man in a straw hat walks by eating from two ice cream cones. Not all of the photos are of the best quality (there are random, grainy pictures of people on the streets and free-frame photos of cars in motion), but overall, the photos effectively capture the beauty of the vintage cars themselves as well as the country that keeps them running. This photographic history is a nice companion to Baker's award-winning travel memoir, Mi Moto Fidel: Motorcycling Through Castro's Cuba.